LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Christianity's Challenge; 



Some Phases of Chkistiantit, 



SUBMITTBD 



Foe Cajstdid Cojstsideeatioi^. 



BY / 

RE¥. HERRICK JOHNSON, D.D. 




AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

150 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 






COPYRIGHT, i88i, 
BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



co:ntents. 



PAGE. 

I. Christianity's Challenge, . . 9 

II. Christianity's Book, . • .27 

ill. Christianity's Christ, . . . 61 

ly. Christianity a Gospel of Definiteness, 89 

V. Christianity's View of Man, . . 117 

VI. Christianity not a Failure, . . 139 

VII. Christianity and Endless Death, . . 165 

VIII. Christianity and Endless Life, . 189 

IX. Christianity and Pleasure, . . 211 

X. Christianity and Business, . . 235 

XI. Christianity and Woman, . . . 253 



NOTE. 



This volume comprises the Sunday afternoon 
lectures delivered during the past winter in Far- 
well Hall, Chicago, under the auspices of the 
Young Men's Christian Association, together with 
several new and hitherto unpublished papers upon 
vital themes. They are now given to the public 
in response to urgent demands, and with the full 
conviction that they are calculated to have a marked 
and beneficial effect upon the religious thought of 

the times. 

The Publishers. 

Chicago, April 15, 1 881, 



PEEFACE. 



The popular doubt of the day is chiefly born of 
popular assaults on Christianity. The great bulk 
of the prevailing skepticism is unscientific. Dash- 
ing, audacious attacks on minor details of the Chris- 
tian system have caught the ear of the public; and 
the very elaborateness of the defence has so mag- 
nified these details, as to lift them to undeserved 
conspicuity. Insectivorous critics may thrust a few 
seeming flaws in any work to such prominence, 
and answers to these critics may so keep these 
seeming flaws in the public eye, that all the glories 
of the great work will be missed in a consideration 
of trifles. 

Christianity can afford to take the aggressive, to 
compel a hearing, to challenge popular doubt to 
look some of Christianity's more important phases 
honestly in the face. Here are its " Book " and its 
" Christ." Here are its definite doctrines, and its 
6 



6 PREFACE. 

views of man, matching marvelously the facts. 
Here are its successes, challenging, in anything 
like the same conditions, an approach to compari- 
son. These things, and things like them, are to 
the last degree evidential. Their exhibition is their 
demonstration. They are Christianity's setting, 
environment, substance, achievement. They are 
the ever increasing marvels and the ever brighten- 
ing glories of the gospel. Instead of a bout with 
the infidel merry-makers at points where they 
choose to attack, let prevalent scepticism be pressed 
with the business of accounting for these transcen- 
dent forces and facts. 

It was with this design in part, that these 
lectures were first delivered. They were meant, 
however, to serve other and immediately practical 
purposes. That they may prove steps into the 
kingdom of truth for some, and helps to a surer 
footing in the King's" highway for others, is the 
hope with which they are now given to a wider 

public. 

The Author. 



I. 

CHRISTIANITY'S CHALLENGE. 



Which of you convinceth me of sin?— Christ. 

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play 
upon the earth, so truth be in the field we do injuriously, 
by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength.—* 
Milton. 

Truth is large. Our aspiration 

Scarce embraces half we be ; 
Shame to stand in his Creation 

And doubt Truth's sufficiency. 
To think God's song unexcelling 
The poor tales of our own telling. 

— Mrs. E. B. Browning 

Prove all things : hold fast that which is good. — Paul. 



CHRISTIANITY'S CHALLENGE. 



Truth of any kind is not harmed by investiga- 
tion. Truth is not afraid of investigation. If it be 
truth that nearly concerns us, it demands investiga- 
tion — has a right to it. We have no right to ig- 
nore it, or to treat it w^ith indifference. 

Now Christianity asserts itself to be the most 
vital truth pertaining to man. Its founder wrap- 
ped all truth up in His own personality, and boldly 
said, "I am the Truth." But such sweeping 
claim as this is not addressed to an unthinking, un- 
reasoning credulity. Along with its matchless as- 
sertion Christianity presses its fearless challenge: 
" Which of you convinceth me of sin?" Its own 
demand is that it shall be put to the proof. It is 
the friend — the steadfast, changeless friend — of 
free inquiry. It is not afraid of the light. It ad- 
dresses men as rational creatures, bound to act 
rationally. It appeals to men as moral agents, 
capable of acting in view of moral motives. It 
9 2 



10 



asks no blind faith. It stands upon its reason. It 
appeals to the law and the testimony. It speaks 
as to wise men and bids them judge calmly, intelli- 
gently, searchingly, but honestly, what it says. It 
asks no favors because it deals with sacred things ; 
but neither is it on this account to be approached 
with prejudice. 

Here are some of the words with which it ad- 
dresses men: "Come now and let us reason to- 
gether." " Is Satan divided against himself?" 
"Doth a devil cast out devils?" "Which of you 
convinceth me of sin?" "And if I say the truth, 
why do ye not believe me?" " Try the spirits, 
whether they be of God." "Prove all things; 
hold fast that which ' is good." It is in just this 
way that Christianity has always fearlessly flung 
out its challenge, and demanded investigation. 

It has met wiih widely different treatment. 
Some have given it no heed whatever. Some, 
with no honest consideration of its claims, have 
laughed it to scorn. Some have so violently op- 
posed it and made such an uproar about it, that its 
preachers have been obliged to flee for personal 
safety. Some have listened attentively and respect- 
fully to a statement of its claims — have examined 
the records, consulted the evidences, searched the 
Scriptures and honestly tried to know what they 



11 



had to say and whether its sayings were worth 
heeding. 

Which is the wise and manly thing to do? 
Here is a cause that now for ages has been a po- 
tent factor in the world's life. It has done some 
revolutionary things. It has turned the world up- 
side down. Something is in it, therefore. It is not 
to be tossed off with a sneer. It deserves at least a 
thoughtful attention. Surely it is rational to exam- 
ine this matter. Surely it is worth every man's 
while to see whether these things of which Chris- 
tianity speaks, are so. Come ye doubters, skeptics, 
half-believers, unbelievers, unsettled as to your 
convictions, in doubtful attitude, or neutral attitude, 
or hostile attitude — come, accept Christianity's 
challenge. Look its claims squarely in the face, 
and prove it to be false, or believe on its Lord. 
Let me name some of the grounds of its challenge, 
and the reasons why it is worth your thoughtful 
consideration. 

I. Christianity is a conspicuous and widely in- 
fluential fact in the world. For eighteen centuries 
it has had growing place and power among men. 
There are certain historical data in connection 
with it that are not now, and that doubtless never 
will be, called in question. They are put beyond 
the legitimate application of the most destructive 



12 CHRIST I AXITy's CHALLENGE. 

criticism. They have been recognized and ac- 
knowledged by the most learned opponents of 
the Christian system. They are established by 
all that amount and variety of evidence by which 
anything in .'he past is made worthy of belief. 
They have entered into the actual life of the best 
races of people. They have shaped the develop- 
ment and directed the currents of history. It is 
impossible to explain the history of the world with- 
out admitting the reality of these facts. They are 
just as much a part of the past as the death of 
Caesar, or the propagation of Alohammedanism, or 
the conquest of William the Norman, or the career 
of Napoleon. 

No one intelligently questions that Jesus was a 
historical person, w'ho lived and died in Palestine 
about eighteen and a half centuries ago. The fact 
of His death, and the singular manner of His death, 
are as clearly established as the fact and the manner 
of any other death in the distant past. Such a 
man as Jesus of Nazareth really appeared on earth 
about the time the four gospels fix. Those four 
gospels contain, in substance, the history of His life. 
This is conceded hy all who, at this day, on the 
ground of scholarship and intellectual competency, 
are entitled to consideration. The miraculous may 
be denied — is denied. Strauss denied it. He 



13 



charged that it was thrust into the record and asso- 
ciated with Jesus as myths or legendary tales, that 
" grew up out of the story-telling or marveling 
habit of the early disciples." But Strauss did not 
deny that Jesus once lived, and that He was the 
founder of Christianity. Theodore Parker denied 
that Jesus was God, and denied the supernatural 
in connection with Jesus' life and character, but 
Theodore Parker said, "Shall we be told such a 
man never lived; that the whole story is a lie ? 
Suppose that Plato and Newton never lived. But 
who did their wonders and thought their thoughts ? 
It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man 
could have fabricated Jesus? None but Jesus." 
Renan denied the supernatural in the recorded life 
of Jesus; but Renan said, "Whatever may be the 
surprises of the future, Jesus will never be sur- 
passed. He founded the pure worship of no age, 
of no clime, which shall be that of all lofty souls to 
the end of time." 

Christianity is no fiction, therefore ; no dream of 
an enthusiast, no mere conjecture, no concocted 
fable, but a fact, a palpable, undeniable fact, and a 
fact of a very extraordinary kind. Its history lies 
imbedded in the history of the world's intelligent 
and ruling nations. The history of civilization 
cannot be written without writing the history of 



14: 



Christianity. Take one point by way of illustra- 
tion. Christianity's birth gave the world a new 
departure, and history a new date — A, D. (Anno 
Domini), the year of the Lord. What is that, 
appearing in all our dates and superscriptions, but 
the assent of the leading civilizations to the fact 
that with Christianity came a new era, whose 
beginning and progress should be forever insepara- 
ble from Christianity itself. Of course, there have 
been, and there are, other facts than this of Chris- 
tianity. Mohammedanism is a fact. Buddhism is 
a fact. Confucianism is a fact. Perpetuated, too, 
these are, and influential; but only over stagnant 
and dead peoples. They are not aggressive facts. 
They do not welcome light and cannot bear it. 
They do not and they cannot push themselves and 
win place and power in this high noon of nine- 
teenth-century intelligence, and amidst the best 
thought of our time. Christianity not only does 
this, but does more. It boldly grapples with these 
huge hulks of superstition — these perpetuated and 
hoary systems of religion, and is shaking them to 
pieces, winning their adherent races to its own 
ideas. It is thus gradually displacing these dead 
facts, having a show of perpetuity, by the greater 
and living fact — ^by itself! 

2. But, secondly, Christianity claims to be a 



15 



divine fact. It avows itself to be from God — his 
last message to men. Its calm and confident asser- 
tion is as to its doctrine, its law, its kingdom, its 
life, its founders, that they are divine. It boldly 
challenges investigation and demands belief on 
this very ground. " Which of you convinceth me 
of sin ?" asks Jesus. "If my words are not the 
words of God, and if my w^orks are not the works 
of God, then the charge of imposture is true, and 
I am guilty of blasphemy. But who of you con- 
vinceth me of this sin? I challenge the proof." 
Here is the present sphere of skepticism. Here is 
the battle of the evidences. Is the Christian relig- 
ion from God any more than any other of the 
prevalent religions is from God.^ Was this Jesus 
of Nazareth a real worker of miracles? Did He 
rise from the dead? Christianity is a historical 
fact. Is it a supernatural fact? Scepticism no 
longer says, "There is no God!" Science now 
joins with Scripture in leaving that bold, arrogant, 
monstrous assertion to " the fool." We have gotten 
away from open and avowed atheism. Blank and 
utter denial of God's existence is too much for 
modern doubt. Agnosticism, the latest, and, at 
present, most popular form of unbelief, says, 
" There may be a God; but we cannot know that 
there is." Well, Jesus talks as if He knew. The 



16 



four gospels read as if there were no room for 
doubt. Through and through the New Testament 
and the Old Testament is the claim that God is 
there speaking to men. And the Christ of the 
gospels, the Christ of Christianity, is represented as 
God manifest in the flesh. This person, this God- 
man called Jesus, asserts over and over His divine 
character and His divine mission. He claims divine 
authority, assumes divine prerogatives, professes to 
be the giver of divine life, and declares that the 
destinies of men forever depend on the reception 
or rejection of Him and His truth. The system of 
truth He founded, and of which He Himself is the 
center and soul, is called the Christian system, or 
the Christian religion — Christianity. It stands 
professedly as God's message to man. 

Friends, this may be the literal truth. It may 
be that every thing claimed by Christianity is well 
founded; that God does here speak authoritatively 
and finally to men. If true, it certainly is worth 
your while, and that of every living being, to hear 
and heed what God has to say. Is Christianity 
true? Have you made up your mind as to that? 
What is your mind ? Is it utterly skeptical ? If so, 
on what ground ? Have you accepted Christian- 
ity's challenge, and instituted inquiry, and honestly 
looked the matter all over, so that you have not 



17 



guesses, nor wishes, nor notions, but intelligent, 
positive convictions? That would be the manly- 
thing. That ought to be the only thing. Is that 
the thing you have done ? If not, don't you think 
the skepticism somewhat contemptible? 

But perhaps you are not utterly skeptical. You 
have heard, however, a great deal that is suggestive 
of doubt as to some things in Scripture. You have 
heard of men making merry with the so-called 
"Mistakes of Moses." You have heard some very 
remarkable statements about the gospels. You 
have heard the old, clear, definite, positive doctrines 
of Scripture set aside, and a gospel of indefiniteness 
heralded as the gospel for our time, of which Far- 
rar, with his " Eternal Hope," Matthew Arnold, 
with his " Sweetness and Light," and Henry Ward 
Beecher, with his exegesis by imagination, are the 
chief apostles. You have heard more or less of 
this and much else that is afloat in public prints and 
in the talk of the street, and doubts are lodged in your 
mind. You find yourself questioning some things — 
wondering if, after all, they are true. You still 
yield a general assent to Christianity, but it is some- 
what vague and indefinite. Uncertainties have 
taken the place of confidences as regards many so- 
called biblical truths. Down in your secret heart 
it is beginning to be doubtful whether, after all, the 

3 



18 cheistianity's challenge. 

things contained in the gospel, all of them, as from 
God, are really so. Take for example your 
thought about God, about yourself, about the future. 
Now Christianity claims that as to all its revela- 
tion, as to every doctrine of it, every disclosure of the 
divine character, every unfolding of human destiny, 
every promise and every penalty, every offer of ever- 
lasting reward and every declaration of everlasting 
punishment, it is from God. And surely, if God 
has spoken here, no creature of God should be sat- 
isfied with doubts or uncertainties. You ought not 
to be taking notions for statements, guesses for 
facts, wishes for arguments, and the kind of 
God you want for the kind of God He is. It is a 
matter of infinite moment. Christianity claims 
to be divine in all its revelation of God, of man, of 
sin, of duty, of destiny. 

Other facts, I know, make the same claim. But 
they do not come to the light to have their claims 
sifted. Christianity does. Other religions claim 
to be from God. But many of them are so associ- 
ated with immorality and lust, and bear such shame- 
ful and ungodly fruit, as to carry the evidence of 
their falsity on their face. All of them fall in with 
sinful nature, and flow with the current, and have 
no out-reaching, aggressive, uplifting vitality. 
They breast and turn back no tides of evil. As 



19 



their adherent races rot and die, they too rot and 
die, and in their stagnant pools to-day they are go- 
ing through the different stages of decay and disso- 
lution. Christianity meets men with some show of 
reason in its divine claim ; for it is constantly rising 
and raising its adherent races with it. Something is 
in it, therefore, something possesses it, separating it 
utterly from everything else in this world. That 
something, it says, is God! Christ says that He is 
the truth, that the truth is the word, that the word 
is God. Is this false ? Then to the law and the testi- 
mony. Listen to the challenge : " Which of 
you convinceth Me of sin?" Is the claim true? 
Listen again : " Why do ye not believe Me ?" 
Surely it is the part of reason instantly to see 
whether these things are so, and honestly and 
earnestly to act upon them if they are. 

3. But thirdly, Christianity claims to be of vast 
personal concern to every living being. Of course 
a revelation from God would be of some moment, 
in any event. But it might be to only a part of 
the human family ; and it might be only preliminary 
and of subordinate importance compared with other 
possible revelations. Christianity, however, claims 
to be of infinite moment, and to each man it declares 
itself to be of equal consequence. Christianity 
asserts itself to be a finality. This is its own state- 



20 



ment. Nothing is to come after. What it settles, 
in the relations of men to God, will be eternally set- 
tled. It claims to be God's last message. It fore- 
tells no other revelation — forbids the reception of 
any other — sweeps the entire future with its ever- 
lasting settlements of reward or punishment and 
comes burdened only with its own struggles and 
its own millennial glories. Its one great promise is 
eternal life through Jesus Christ to them that be- 
lieve. Its one great revelation of punishment is 
the final and remediless doom of those who believe 
not. The earliest theophanies were only preludes 
to Judaism; and Judaism itself was only a prepar- 
ation for Christianity. But if Christianity be true, 
it is the last thing. God has nothing else with 
which to affect men and change their condition. 
This fixes destinies eternally. According to its 
own words, he that believeth it shall be saved. He 
that believeth it not shall be damned. From the 
judgment seat of its divine founder, the wicked 
shall go away into everlasting punishment — the 
righteous into life eternal. 

And these transcendent interests and final settle- 
ments are claimed by Christianity to have relation 
to every individual soul. The personality of this 
message from God and the universality of it are 
alike unmistakable. All are gone out of the way, 



21 



all need the redemption of Christ, all must repent, 
all must die, all must stand before the judgment 
seat, every one must give account of himself to 
God, and every one shall there receive the things 
done in his body, according to that he hath done, 
whether it be good or bad. There is no discharge 
in that war. There is no escape from that tribunal. 
God shall bring every work into judgment with 
every secret thing. And there is no name under 
heaven whereby men, any man, can escape the 
condemnation of that court of last resort and be 
saved, but the name of Jesus. These are the 
claims and doctrines of Christianity. These are the 
revelations of Him who assumed to be God mani- 
fest in the flesh, and to come into the world that 
the world through Him might be saved. And I 
ask if they do not magnify and make clear to every 
mind the unutterable folly of dismissing Chris- 
tianity, or doubting it, without an honest and 
thorough consideration. If such consequences, so 
personal to each and so fearful and remediless, are 
declared to hang on the practical denial or admis- 
sion of the claims of the gospel, then nothing 
whatever ought so soon to be settled in the case of 
every living soul as whether these claims are true 
or false. Come, then, and let us reason together. 
If you have a doubt about Christianity or any of 



22 



its claims — if you are rejecting any truth concern- 
ing the divine character, or vour own character, or 
the awards of the judgment, or the eternal future, 
claimed here to be the truth of God, without ever 
having fully and finally made up your mind 
whether the claim is well founded (and you may 
be doing this while even a member of the church) 
in the name of the Christianity I preach and of the 
Christ in whose stead I stand before you, I demand 
that you stop — stop now, in the midst of whatever 
may be absorbing your attention or engaging your 
thought; stop and settle this question once for all. 
Dare to face it — to give it instant and earnest heed. 
You may have thought of it before.' But you 
have not so sincerely and so thoroughly given it 
consideration that you stand with reference to it as 
one whose mind is made up. It is worth such con- 
sideration. It ought to have it — ought to have it 
now. Christianity is everything to you, or it is 
nothing. It is of inconceivable consequence, or it 
is as worthless and as wicked an imposition as was 
ever brought before the world. 

Many of you, doubtless, are going on, yielding 
a kind of general assent to Christianity's divine 
claims, but exhibiting, nevertheless, a practical 
infidelity. You are not so certain about these 
things after all. You find yourselves possibly 



ohristiajstity's challenge. 23 

cherishing a sort of half-defined hope that your 
case is not so bad, and that, even without a per- 
sonal interest in the Christian religion, it will not 
go so wholly ill with you as some zealous preachers 
of Christianity would make out. Well, is it not 
time that this whole question was put at rest? Is 
it not worth your while to settle decisively your 
belief in, and your relation to, a fact so conspicuous 
and influential in the world, coming with such 
awful claims of authority, and making such 
demands upon you, and whose acceptance or 
rejection involves such fearful consequences, if true? 
Is it right, is it manly, is it well, is it wise, to dis- 
miss this matter with an "Oh, I guess there's 
some doubt about these things?" Guess! Should 
a man be guessing on eternity? 

Christianity, Christ, heaven, hell, the judgment, 
sin, holiness, God — these, and whether they be 
true or false, and our personal relations to them, 
whether they be right or wrong, are things to 
know about^ not to be doubting or guessing about. 
Why not determine, every one of you unsettled in 
regard to your personal relation to this gospel of 
Jesus Christ, to begin this very hour, seriously and 
thoughtfully, with an open Bible and a teachable 
spirit, to see once for all whether these things are 
so, and to settle once for all what you will do with 



24 



Christianit3^'s claims. What it is in the world to- 
day, and what it assumes in its address to your 
consciences and hearts, make it above all things 
else in the uni^-erse worth your instant and 
thoughtful attention. Give it that, and resolve 
that you will not be swerved from giving it that, 
till you are put past all doubt as to where you 
exactly stand and as to what you exactly believe 
with reference to this so-called gospel of God, and 
I am persuaded you will be found accepting ere 
long with an adoring and grateful heart its prof- 
fered terms of mercy. 



II. 
CHRISTIANITY'S BOOK. 



Revelation is not a vain thing for us. It is our life. 
■ — Westcott. 

One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles from 
earthlj streams. — McCheyne. 

Every hour 
I read you, kills a sin, 
Or lets a virtue in 
To fight against it. — Isaak Walton. 

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul. The 
testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. 
The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. 
The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the 
eyes. The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether. More to be desired are they than gold, yea, 
than much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and the 
honey-comb. Moreov.er, by them is thy servant warned; 
and in keeping of them there is great reward. 

. — ^The Psalmist. 



CHRISTIANITY'S BOOK. 



" And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, 
He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the 
things concerning Himself." Here is Christ, the 
recognized founder of Christianity, going through 
the Old Testament Scriptures to show that they are 
filled with " things concerning Himself." 

" But the word of the Lord endureth forever. 
And this is the word which by the Gospel is preached 
unto you." Here is a recognized apostle of Christ 
claiming that the New Testament, alike with the 
Old Testament, is the word of God. Christianity's 
Book is thus all Scripture, old and new. Chris- 
tianity stands or falls not simply with the four gos- 
pels, nor with the records of the doings and sayings 
of the apostles, but also with Moses and the 
Prophets and the Psalms. " Search the Scriptures, 
for they are they which testify of Me." " If ye 
believe not Moses' writings, how shall ye believe 
my words ?" So says Christ. " The word of 
27 



28 



God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the 
word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of 
God." So says an apostle of Christ. They go 
together. They are equally of God. The Penta- 
teuch and the gospels, the prophecies and the 
epistles, the Psalms and the Revelation, Moses 
and Matthew, Isaiah and Paul, David and John — 
they all point to Christ, preach Christ, are explain- 
able only by Christ. Make them Christless and 
you make them meaningless. Christianity's Book 
is the whole Bible. Christianity's record is all 
Scripture. The center of the Bible is the socket 
of the cross. 

I wish just now to press upon your attention 
some features of this book. If you are disposed to 
deal honestly with Christianity, and to accept the 
challenge to a thoughtful and candid consideration 
of its claims, here is where investigation should 
begin. An appeal to the record is always in order. 
Christianity is to be judged by its recorded princi- 
ples, by its written law, by its accessible and unde- 
niable truths and facts. Here is the book. It is 
only the folly of the fool that will let Just gather 
on its unopened lids, and yet denounce or doubt its 
claims. To know the claims of any author to 
consideration we must look inside his works. To 
judge of Christianity with any fairness we must 
search these Scriptures. 



29 



Many read the Bible every day. Some love to 
read it. Some read it from a sense of duty. Some, 
it may be, are actuated by a vague and indefinable 
and unacknowledged fear that somehow it will go 
wrong with them if the Bible be not read. Many, 
in all probability, read it just as the mood takes 
them ; and many seldom, if ever, read it at all. 
Whatever may be the truth as to your familiarity, 
or want of familiarity with this book, I ask you 
now to look into it a while with me. Not a tithe of 
its wonders can be even named in a brief hour. No 
hundred books have been written about as much as 
this one; and no writer that has written about it 
claims to have yet fathomed its depths. Surely a 
book that has made such stir and shown such 
resource, that has had so much to do with the life 
of the world, that has been such an acknowledged 
power in society, that has had so remarkable a 
history, and that is to-day published in well nigh 
all the languages of the globe, cannot be without 
Interest to every thoughtful mind as possibly justi- 
fying to the fullest extent the imperious and pro- 
found claims of Christianity. Our brief glance at 
only a few of the marvels of this book may com- 
pel a change of judgment — may be enough to 
show that the Bible cannot be accounted for on any 
other ground than that it is of God I 



30 



I. Its history commands our atler^txoii. It is 
unique and altogether peculiar. In some of its 
parts it is by far the oldest book in the world — the 
earliest production of the human mind now in 
existence. We have a kind of veneration lor 
antiquity. We cross seas and continents to look 
with interest and wonder on the work of preceding 
centuries. But in our homes we have ancient 
monuments of written language so venerable that 
there is nothing extant to match them. Take 
the different parts of the Bible, and consider 
when they were written, through nearly a score of 
centuries; by whom they were written — by prince 
and peasant, by sovereign and slave, scholar and 
novice, men of letters and men without letters; in 
what conditions they were written — of affluence and 
indigence, under widely different states of society, 
in ages widely apart, treating subjects of limitless 
sweep and vast significance, going fearlessly down 
on record both as to the remote past and the 
remote future, and thus risking exposure both by 
scientific research and by the progress of events. 
And yet the authors are all found in harmony, the 
different parts dove-tail with a wonderful fitness, 
the same great object pervades thetn all, the type 
and the typified, the prophecy and fulfillment, the 
shadow and the substance, the mysterious contra- 



31 



riety of Messianic characteristics, and the mysteri- 
ous person in whom these opposing and seemingly 
contradictory characteristics all meet, answer to 
each other in a marvelous way, and from Genesis 
to Revelation is unfolded the same great system of 
truth and duty. How did such a book get into the 
w^orld ? The book is here, itself a miracle. Ac- 
count for it, will you, without God ! 

The word " Bible," as many of you know, is 
from the Greek word fSipMov, meaning a roll or 
scroll, z. e., a volume or book, such being the 
ancient form of a book made from the inner bark of 
the papyrus, or from parchment. As a plural noun 
— Ta Pi^lia — "the books," it was applied in the 
ancient Greek and Latin churches to the whole 
collection of sacred or canonical books; but in the 
English, as in all the modern languages of Europe, 
it has become a singular noun, to (3ij3?uov, and thus 
signifies "The Book." Hence, "the Bible" 
means, literally, T'/ie Book^ as if there were no 
other. So that common usage has come unde- 
signedly to make recognition of what it is, and 
what God designed it to be, the one hook of the 
world. 

This book began to be some fifteen centuries be- 
fore Christ. Its first parts were written by Moses, 
the great Hebrew legislator and law- giver. The 



32 christiaxity's eook. 

Jews, of all sects, from time immemorial have held 
to this view. This tradition is wide-spread, per- 
sistent, most ancient and almost unanimous. 
Scholars, well-nigh to a man, and after the widest 
research, agree in this — that the first five books of 
the Bible, called the Pentateuch, must be assigned 
to the Mosaic period and must be conceded Mosaic 
authorship. Do not let us be alarmed by the jin- 
gle of Ingersollisms, and get in a hurry to give up 
Moses. In giving up Moses we may be compelled 
to give up Christ. If Moses was a fraud, Christ 
was, for Christ endorsed him. " If ye believe not 
Moses' writings, how shall ye believe my words?" 
Subsequent to Moses, additions were made to the 
sacred writings from time to time, and all were 
held in sacred reverence by the Jewish nation and 
most carefully preserved. The Jews were the 
guardians of what is called the Old Testament, until 
the birth of Christ. For many centuries after, they 
had these Scriptures largely under their care. 
They copied them with most scrupulous exactness. 
" The deep reverence of the Jews for their sacred 
books, manifests itself in their numberless rules for 
the guidance of copyists in the transcription of the 
rolls designed for use in the synagogue service. 
They extended to every minute particular; the 
fjuality of the ink and the parchment; the number, 



33 



length and breadth of the columns; the number of 
lines in each column, and the number of words in 
each line. No word must be written till the 
copyist had first inspected it in the example before 
him, and pronounced it aloud; before writing the 
name of God he must wash his pen; all redun- 
dance or defect of letters must be carefully avoided ; 
prose must not be written as verse, or verse as 
prose ; and when the copy has been completed, it 
must be examined for approval or rejection, within 
thirty days." When these copyists repeated a 
word, or wrote down a wrong letter, or blotted the 
parchment, they never made a correction — they 
destroyed the skin, and commenced work on 
another. They could tell the number of times the 
first letter of the Hebrew alphabet was repeated in 
the Old Testament. They could give the central 
letter of each book, for they counted the words and 
the letters of them all. Though these rules and 
rigid scrupulosities, superstitious and foolish as 
some of them seem, bear date subsequent to the 
beginning of the Christian era, the spirit of rever- 
ence for the sacred books which they manifest, as- 
sures us that a marvelous and almost miraculous 
supervision and care were always exercised by the 
Jews for the preservation and purity of their so- 
called sacred books. And when we consider that 

5 



34 



the very writings thus so remarkably preserved, 
are full of the severest censures upon the nation 
preserving them, representing the Jew^ish people 
as unexampled in their privileges, at the same time 
without a parallel in their odious idolatries and 
senseless traditions, God charging them with the 
wildest ingratitude and spiritual harlotry, and visit- 
ing them with the severest chastisement, and hold- 
ing up their crimes as deserving the just judgment 
of heaven — when we consider that such a condemn- 
ing record as this was preserved by the Jews 
themselves, the evidence of Jewish fidelity in pro- 
tecting their books from error, seems to be put be- 
yond a question. 

The New Testament portion of the Bible, was of 
course VN^ritten after Christ's coming, and w^ithin 
the first century. The preservation of this in its 
essential purity is also established by many excellent 
proofs, and especially by the discovery of three an- 
cient manuscripts — one, now in the British museum, 
bearing indubitable evidences of having been 
written in the fifth century; another, now in the 
Vatican at Rome, written in the fourth century ; and 
the third, found at a convent on Mt. Sinai, and now 
at St. Petersburg, also written in the fourth century. 
These documents have been providentially pre- 
served through all the (2a*"o;ers of fourteen or fif- 



35 



teen centuries, and are now delivered safe in our 
hands, wonderful witnesses of the general and 
essential accuracy of our common English bibles. 
" No simple work of ancient Greek classical litera* 
ture," saysTischendorf, " can command three such 
original witnesses as the Sinaitic, Vatican and Al- 
exandrine manuscripts, to the integrity and accur- 
acy of its text." Here then is a book, the oldest in 
the world, whose construction extended over at 
least fifteen hundred years, written therefore, in 
ages widely apart, and by every variety of author- 
ship; its general accuracy certified by almost 
every possible proof, and handed to us across the 
waste of thirty centuries. This, of itself, should in- 
vest it with surpassing interest. 

2. Consider now the historical character of its 
contents. Viewed in the entire sweep of its rec- 
ord, the Bible covers the whole period of time, and 
embraces the whole destiny of the human race. 
It does not start with the record of events occur- 
ring when its first books were written, but goes 
back to the world's birth, and tells us how the 
foundations of the earth were laid. Thence it 
brings us down the record of time, presenting the 
general history of the world in the first few chapters, 
then the special history of the children of Israel, and 
60 It bears us forward through the lapse of ages and 



36 



generations, and on by prophecy through the future 
to the end of time, revealing at last the judgment, 
with its unchangeable issues of life and death, when 
the righteous and the wicked shall alike go to their 
own place. No other book does this. No other book 
has a rational account of the creation of the world, 
of the origin of man, of his entire history, and of 
his future destiny. Mythology abounds in ac- 
counts of creation; but the fabulous and the ridic- 
ulous are so intermingled, there is such trifling 
about the times and imagined incidents of creation, 
such an incongruous mixture presents itself, " that 
the very school-boy laughs at these fables as he spells 
them out in his Latin or Greek reader." Take 
the simple, but sublime imagery of the Bible ac- 
count of creation, that grand opening declaration, 
"In the beginning, God created the heaven and 
the earth," and then the formlessness, the darkness 
primal, the brooding spirit of God, the omnific 
Word giving birth to light, setting fast the firma- 
ment, laying the beams of its chambers in the 
midst of the waters and hanging the earth upon 
nothing ; and how is all this transformed and deform- 
ed by the traditional cosmogony of the Greek fables, 
telling us that from Chaos were born Night and 
Erebus, and how from them arose the Ether and 
the Day, and how afterward Earth was born, 



87 



from whom, and like to itself on all sides surround- 
ing, came starry Ouranos. 

The history of the race, also, is to be found no- 
where else beyond the lids of the Bible, bearing 
here on its very face the impress of accuracy, and 
corroborated in all its allusions to geography and 
climate, to manners and customs, by subsequent 
scientific researches — the very ruins of ancient cit- 
ies, and the very rubbish of the remote past com- 
pelled now to bear witness to the historical correct- 
ness of biblical statements. 

Very many of its prophecies, too, have been 
verified by exact fulfillment, giving us warrant 
that the rest of the prophetic record relating 
to the world's great moral transformation, the 
end of time, the judgment and eternity, will have 
like verification. Take the prophecies concern- 
ing the Jews, (Leviticus, xxvi; Deuteronomy, 
xxviii; Luke, xxi, 24;) and what wonderful ful- 
fillment they have had and are having! "Give 
me an evidence of Christianity," said a king to one 
of his subjects. " The Jews, your majesty," was 
the reply. And to-day, over all the world, they 
are still fulfilling the word of Scripture. When 
Babylon was the glory of kingdoms, Isaiah dared 
prophecy of it that it would be swept with the 
besom of destruction and never be inhabited. Go 



38 



read the words of that prophecy, Isaiah ,xm, 19, 20 
and xiv, 23. Read also the prophecies of Nineveh 
and of Tyre, and above all, the minute, circumstan- 
tial,vastly varied and seemingly contradictory proph- 
ecies of the Messiah, running through and 
through the Old Testament, and appearing in 
all its v^arp and woof. Then read the facts, the 
unquestionable and unchallenged facts of history, 
and see how they match the Word. Who copied 
the facts so minutely and so accurately when they 
were only history waiting to be made? There the 
facts are, imbedded in writings ages before the 
events came to pass. Was this the happy-go-easy 
guesswork of some human imaginations? His- 
tory that anticipates its facts, and risks all on their 
fulfillment — who writes it? Such history is here; 
Christianity's book, itself a miracle. Account 
for it, will you, without God! 

3. But, this book challenges attention as a liter- 
ary work', for its grand ideas and glowing imagery, 
its sublime descriptions, its pathos, its reasoning, 
stimulating thought and imagination, addressing 
and gratifying the intellect, the taste, the aesthetic 
nature. 

, Persons of fine mental culture are often utterly 
unaware of the wealth of thought and touching 
incident there is in the Scripture. But the truth is, 



cheistianity's book. 39 

as a book for the mind^ simply, it has no peer in 
the world. Viewed intellectually, it is incompar- 
ably superior to all else men have produced. Just 
as the earth is crowded with the sublime and the 
beautiful, so is this book. It has poem and prov- 
erb and story and psalm; compact logic and thrill- 
ing verse. It is not simply a theological treatise, 
a code of laws, a religious homily, a dry diction- 
ary and grammar of the language of Canaan; 
but the Bible — the Book — w^hile the only book for 
the soul, the best book for the mind. I am. well 
aware that many have never looked upon it so. 
So irksome indeed and so insipid have early asso- 
ciation and its begotten prejudices made the book 
with some, that it has been truly said, " Were they 
shut up in a parlor with an old directory, and an 
old almanac, and an old Bible, they w^ould spend 
the first hour on the almanac, and the next on the 
directory, and would die of ennui before they 
opened the Bible." This is partly the fault of the 
friends of the Bible; parents and teachers, and min- 
isters, misusing the Bible; associating it with tasks; 
compelling its reading at great length and in rigid 
course, and with no reference to the tastes and ap- 
titudes, and varying needs of children and youths; 
going with like fidelity and like listlessness through 
joyless genealogies and joyful psalms, through the 



40 



merest details of history and touching stories of 
homes and hearts, making no effort to bring out 
the beauties and set forth the excellencies and to ex- 
plain and enforce the precious lessons with which 
the Bible abounds. But the distaste and disrelish 
for this book are partly owing to the prejudices of 
the natural heart against anything distinctively as- 
sociated with religion. 

Christianity's book is full of the choicest gems of 
thought, combining a variety and richness and rare- 
ness to be found in no other volume. What I have 
said of its construction in different ages, in different 
countries, by different authors, with widely varying 
tastes and gifts, and styles of thought and speech, 
would naturally make it marvelous in its variety 
and of universal adaptation. And when we come 
to read the book we find it is so. Do we want 
logic? We have it, convincing, compact, complete 
in Paul. Would we be moved by the sublime? 
There is nothing in the whole compass of human 
language so full of sublimity as some of the pas- 
sages in Job and Isaiah and the Psalms and Revela- 
tion. Are we fond of aphorism and sententious 
maxim? Where are these to be found, so full of 
pith and pungency, so terse, so sharp, so vigorous as 
in the Proverbs of Solomon ? Narrative in its rarest 
simplicity and beauty, is in the Pentateuch and the 



41 



gospels. The book of Ruth is a story of filial 
affection and devotion, which, in touching descrip- 
tion, Voltaire himself said there was nothing in 
Homer or in any other classic writer to equal. H 
we are charmed with sanguine and hopeful speech,, 
we may catch the spirit of it as we touch the pulse 
beating in all the words of the ardent and impul- 
sive Peter. If we would calm the vague, dark 
tumult of our heart's inner sea, and hush the din of 
earth's angry noises, we may go to the undisturbed 
stillness of those depths where the thought of the 
beloved disciple flows 'Mike a molten melody or 
an abysmal joy." If we would please the fancy 
we have the tender pastoral. If we would stir the 
imagination, we have the winged flights of the 
bold singer of Israel and the triumph songs of 
God's victors at the Red Sea, and the rapt visions 
of the seer of Patmos. History, biography, poe- 
try, narrative, incident, argument, sublimity, sim- 
plicity, beauty, glory, passion, peace, tenderness, 
tearfulness, song and story, they are all here. Let 
me cite you to some of them. 

Biography. Is there a better, a purer, a nobler 
than that of Jesus? Even in the judgment of 
those who do not believe in the Bible as I believe 
in it. His is the " greatest soul of all the sons of 
men," and "there is none born greater than 
6 



42 

Jesus," " standing alone," " serene in awful loveli- 
ness," "the highest type of man." "Blessed be 
God," says Theodore Parker, "that so much man- 
liness has been lived out, and stands there yet, a 
lasting monument to mark how high the tides of 
divine life have risen in the world." Can any one 
afford to be ignorant of the history of such a char- 
acter, so peerless and so alone among men? This 
one spotless biography, the only one in the world, is 
found in the Bible. 

Vivid description. Is there any classic picture of 
a thunder-storm to surpass the twenty-ninth Psalm? 
Listen to it, and see how Jehovah's presence adds 
grandeur to the majestic ode, and how it must 
have filled men with a kind of wondering awe as 
they stood and saw the progress of the storm : " The 
voice of the Lord is on the sea; the God of glory 
thundereth; the Lord is on the mighty sea. The 
voice of the Lord is powerful; the voice of the 
Lord is full of majesty. The voice of the Lord 
breaketh the cedars; yea, the Lord breaketh the 
cedars of Lebanon. The voice of the Lord 
divideth the flames of fire. The voice of the 
Lord shaketh the wilderness. The Lord sitteth 
upon the»f^ood, yea, the Lord sitteth King forever." 

The sublime. Where shall we find it if not 
in the Bible ? Go read the petty and crude fancies of 



43 



ancient fables, trifling about creation, and then turn 
to the thirty-eighth of Job and Hsten to the Lord's 
challenge out of the whirlwind : " Where wast 
thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? 
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened, 
and who laid the corner-stone thereof when the 
stars of the morning sang together, and all the 
sons of God shouted for joy ? Or who shut up the 
sea with doors in its gushing forth when it issued 
from the womb? When I made the cloud the gar- 
ment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band 
for it? When I brake upon it my law, and set 
bars and doors, and said, ' Hitherto shalt thou 
come and no farther, and here shall thy proud 
waves be stayed?' Hast thou commanded the 
morning? Hast thou caused the dawn to know its 
place ? Where is the way where light dwelleth ? 
Who hath divided a water-course for the over- 
flowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of 
thunder? Hath the rain a father? or who hath 
begotten the drops of dew?" 

Figures of speech. Where are they, so 
beautiful, so eloquent, so graphic, as in the Scrip- 
tures? "He looketh on the earth and it tremb- 
leth;" that is the earthquake. "He toucheth the 
hills and they smoke;" that is the volcano. "The 
pillars of heaven tremble and a^e astonished at his 



u 



reproof;" that is the quaking from the thunder of 
His power. " He hangeth the earth upon noth- 
ing;" that is the world swung in its orbit by the 
word of the Lord. 

Tender pastorals, beautiful and touching 
idyls. There are none made rarer and sweeter 
than the songs and hymns of the Hebrews. That 
twenty-third Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd ; I 
shall not want ; He maketh me to lie down in 
green pastures: yea, though I walk through 
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no 
evil." O how many timid souls, stepping into the 
gloom of death's shadowy valley, have grown calm 
and trustful at the gentle warbling music of this un. 
surpassed idyl. And what immortal robing has been 
given to true and tender fidelity in those words of 
Ruth, "Entreat me not to leave thee, nor to return 
from following after thee; for whither thou goest 
I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy 
people shall be my people, and thy God my God ; 
where thou diest I wall die, and there will I be 
buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if 
aught but death part thee and me." The parable 
of the prodigal son; who can read it and think of 
finding narrative elsewhere surpassing it in natural- 
ness and simplicity. Paul's account of " love " in 
his letter to the Corinthians — how it glows and 



45 



glistens, radiant and beautiful, the one excelling 
brilliant amidst a remarkable cluster of brilliants ! 
When this gem flashes out in the light it outshines all 
the rest: '• Love suflfereth long and is kind. Love 
envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, 
seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, 
thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but 
rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, be- 
lieveth all things, hopeth all things, endureth 
all things. Love never faileth." Greece, whose 
air was redolent of song; Italy, the land of the 
passions; sages, heroes, poets, honored in every 
clime — these all have failed to put into their speech 
the soul of love imprisoned here in Apostolic word 
and rustling amidst the leaves of the New Testa- 
ment. 

What wonder that the Bible was one of the four 
volumes which always lay on Byron's table! It is 
the most thought-suggesting book in the world. 
No other deals with such grand themes. Painters ! 
Call the roll of the world's masters in this art; 
where have they gotten their best conceptions? 
Poets! Name those that men will not let die; 
from what source have they drawn highest inspi- 
ration? Sculptors! Orators! To what one book 
are these all so much indebted as to the Bible ? The 
most wonderful of histories, the grandest displays 



46 

of intellectual power, the boldest conceptions of 
human thought, and scenes transcending in interest 
and significance and sublimity all other scenes of 
time are gathered and centered in this book. An 
English barrister, not himself a religious man* 
when asked why he put students in law, from the 
very first, to the study and analysis of the most 
difficult passages of Scripture, replied, " Because 
there is nothing else like it in any language for the 
development of mind and character." Macaulay 
said, " The English Bible — a book which, if every- 
thing else in our language should perish, would 
alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty 
and power." It is the awakener of thought. 
When Luther found the Bible, and gave it to the 
people, schools sprang up all over Germany. The 
authors of the Cosmo^ and the Principia here 
found food for their master minds, and paid homage 
to the intellectual worth of the Bible. ?"''ere Bacon 
saw how the path of true science led straight up to 
God. Here Milton bathed his wings, and though 
upon his sightless orbs, as he lifted them toward 
heaven the sunbeams played in vain, he of all 
mortal singers soared nearest the great white 
throne. 

Now tell me, who first thought these thoughts 
that poets and painters and sculptors and philoso- 



47 



phers of all ages have struggled so to set in song- 
and color and marble and system, counting it a 
glory for which they would be willing to die to 
give one of these great thoughts complete expres- 
sion? The thoughts are here in Christianity's 
book. Account for them, will you, without God! 

4. Look now at the code of morals or the stand- 
ard of raorality found in the Bible. 

It is the only true criterion of right and wrong 
in human conduct. This book's first and great in- 
junction is, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart." Bt^l it is especially of its incul- 
cations with reference to the duties men owe one 
another that I would now speak. " Thou shalt love 
thy u'^ighbor as thyself" — this is its fundamental 
law. " Whatsoever ye would that men should do 
unto you, do ye even so unto them :" this is its 
golden rule. By precept and incident and fact and 
story, it seeks to illustrate and enforce these great 
central principles. Thus it lays broad and deep 
the foundations ot a virtuous character. Who is 
thy neighbor? Humanity is thy neighbor, says 
the Bible. It overrides 'all distinctions of race or 
sect, or caste, or color. It hushes feuds. It makes 
battles impossible; or would, if its principles were 
carried out. For we cannot love, and bless, and 
forgive, and return good for evil, and overcome 



•1:8 Christianity's book. 

evil with good, and at the same time hate and figlit 
one another. If the Bible had its way, and its 
standard of morals were recognized and observed 
in the world, the swords would be beaten into 
plough- shares and the spears into pruning hooks, 
the chains would break away from the limbs of all 
bondmen, and the world's oppressed would go free, 
justice would take the place of revenge, law of 
lawlessness, love of hate, and all political and social 
relations would be ennobled and beautified. This 
is no mere rhetorical statement. It is the testimony 
and the truth of history. It is not commerce, not 
philosophy, not letters; it is the Bible, that human- 
izes societ3^ In the proudest daj^s of Greece, when 
reason was lord, and philosophy achieved its no- 
blest triumphs; and in Corinth, cultivated, polished, 
scholary, the light of all Greece, but without a 
bible, Venus was the worshipped goddess, a per- 
sonification of lust, Egypt was once the seat of 
the world's best learning — the home of high cul- 
ture, yet there the first patrons of the arts and sci- 
ences were brute worshipers. Now if philosophy 
and letters, and the arts, painting and poetry and 
sculpture, are the elevating and purifying forces of 
society, why did they not perform their ofiice in 
those ancient days of splendor and power? They 
did their utmost in Greece, but there they only ele- 



49 



vated the few, and these they did not purify. Law 
achieved its utmost in Rome, and though helped 
by Cicero's system of ethics, the best which pure 
heathenism ever produced, civil government failed 
to lift men up into a life of moral purity. 

Now let the Bible in. Give it a place among 
the forces that mould and modify individual and 
national character. Look where this book has 
been the freest — where it has been open to the 
masses, where no priestly tyranny has put a lock 
upon it. There you see the best forms of govern- 
ment, the largest liberty, the highest social and 
moral elevation. The people that have had the 
Bible — from these alone flow the streams that are 
beautifying the moral wastes in our world. Bible 
England, Bible Scotland, Bible America, with all 
their corruption and at so wide a departure as they 
are from the standard of morals given in the Scrip- 
tures, are the great moral levers that are lifting up 
the nations. Turn your eyes to the Sandwich 
Islands, to Africa, China, and India, and see 
what the Bible has done there. It has put tens of 
thousands of children at school; changed savages 
into saints; changed barbarism into civilization; 
vice into virtue, and transformed woman, the de- 
graded, oppressed, enslaved beast of burden, into 
the angel of the household, loved and honored as a 

7 



50 



wife and mother, clothed and in her right mind, 
sitting at the feet of Jesus. Garibaldi being com- 
plimented on his agency in securing Italian deliv- 
erance, said, " It is the Bible that has freed Italy." 
France once tried to do without this book — caused 
it to be tied to the tail of an ass to be dragged in 
contempt through the street; put a public prosti- 
tute on the Bible upon the altar, and worshipped 
her as the goddess of reason. What was the con- 
sequence? Society was reft of its safeguard — the 
ship of State lost its chart and compass. France 
was a sea of blood. " France must have a re- 
ligion," said one of her greatest statesmen. " The 
republic without a God was quickly stranded," 
afterwards wrote Lamartine. Liberty, equality 
and fraternity were the watchwords — but the lib- 
erty was license, and the equality was in lawless- 
ness, and the fraternity was a riot of hate and pas- 
sion. These, too, are the watch-words of the New 
Testament — the very doctrine of Jesus. But here 
they are no rhetorical and unmeaning flourish. 
The liberty is the liberty of sons, and the equality 
is the equality of brotherhood, and the fraternity is 
the fraternity of love. 

Again I say, the book is here, itself a miracle. It 
must be accounted for. Deny it to be what it claims 
to be, a revelation from heaven, and you are landed 



CHKISTIAmTY's BOOK. 51 

in a wilderness of absurdities, and this book, instead 
of being a divine and beautiful harmony, is a 
bundle of ridiculous and wild contradictions. Take 
the way it was made up, so many books, so 
many writers, so far apart in history, so widely 
differing every way; yet one book, with a perfect 
unity, by a marvelous interweaving of prophecy 
and fulfillment, doctrine and fact, truth and life; 
take its historical contents that sweep backward 
to creation and forward to judgment, and the truth 
of no one of which has yet been successfully 
challenged; take its great thoughts that have 
been the inspiration of the world's great thinkers, 
and the heights and depths of which have never yet 
been scaled or fathomed; take its gospel ethics, 
bathed in the light and glory and love of Calvary, 
and lifting w^iole peoples up from debasing levels 
to high altitudes ; take the fact that it is *' the 
only book that has ever made the circuit of the 
globe, holding its own in every important language 
or dialect of men," and keeping its voice clear, 
ringing and majestic, as it sounds out to the nations 
its great truths; take this and vastly more, that 
might be said of it, and tell me, who had to do 
with it all ? Who wrote this book ? 

Did bad men write it? Then we have the best 
book in the world, born of fraud. We have the 



52 



devil in the heart of man, coining a speech that has 
done more to drive the devil out of the heart of 
man, than all other agencies and forces combined. 
We have men w^riting a book that loads with eter- 
nal curses the very imposture of which they were 
guilty in writing it. 

Did good men write it? Then we have these 
good men saying the heavenliest things with a 
lie in their mouth. We have angels of innocence 
clothed with damnable hypocrisy ; for they say they 
spake as they were moved of God. They put be- 
fore their speech, and they stamp upon all their 
writings, " Thus saith the Lord.'''' How can they 
say that, and be good men, unless they be wild 
fanatical enthusiasts, or unless they do speak the 
truth? Do these men write like fanatics? Does 
this book read like the hallucinations of dreamers? 
Ah, these men are neither fools nor knaves. They 
do tell the truth. Christianity's book is of God. 
Difficulties! Yes, or there would be no room for 
faith. Mysteries ! Yes, for how could the infinite 
God communicate with the finite creature, man, 
without mystery? A God all understood, would be 
no God at all. 

It is only as a divine revelation, thrilling 
through all its nervous words with the inspira- 
tion of Jehovah, that this book discloses the 



53 



hidings of its power. It is thus that it brings 
man face to face with eternal realities. It is thus 
that it tells man what he most needs to know. It 
is thus that It takes the human soul, marred and 
dimmed with earthliness, blackened and blasted 
with the curse of sin, purifies it of its dross, and 
makes It fit to be worn in the diadem of Jesus. It 
is thus that it reaches down Into the depths of 
moral defilement and lifts man up to, and makes 
him like, God. All the literature of the world has 
no such influence, works no such marvels.^ kindles 
no such hopes as this book. It has been well 
said, and Is no burst of rhetorical extravagance, 
" The sun never sets on its gleaming page. It goes 
equally to the cottage of the plain man and the 
palace of the king. It is woven into the literature 
of the scholar and colors the talk of the street. It 
enters into men's closets — mingles in all the grief 
and cheerfulness of life. It blesses us when we are 
born, and is with us at our bridals and burials. 
The aching head finds a softer pillow when the 
Bible lies underneath. It tempers our grief to 
finer issues. It lifts man above himself. The 
timid man looking through the glass of Scripture, 
does not fear to stand alone, to tread the way un- 
known and distant, to take the death-angel by the 
hand and bid farewell to wife and babes and home. 



54 



Men rest on it their dearest hopes. It tells them 
of God and of his blessed Son : of earthly duties 
and of Heavenly rest." 

The quaint lines of Izaak Walton have been 
verified in the experience of milions — 
" Every hour 
I read you, kills a sin, 
Or lets a virtue in 
To fight against it." 

And to-day, more than sixty million copies of 
the word of God have been issued by the different 
organizations of the continents. 

Well, this does look as if somebody believed in it. 
It seems to me this ansv^ers Strauss' questions in his 
"Old and New Faith," "Are we still Christians?" 
and "Have we still a religion?" Wo be to us, if we 
ever allow a grasping, repressive, wily, ambitious, 
spirit-enslaving and soul-dwarfing, anathema- 
hurling, spiritual and temporal despotism t-o cast 
this book out or to shut it away from the people 
by the lock of priestly tyranny. Wo be to us, if 
in the mad rush for riches and pleasure, our senses 
are so swept and our minds are so ravished by ma- 
terial gains and problems and philosophies, that 
we shall lose the spiritual altitudes of justice and 
joy, and sweet peace to wdiich the word of God 
has lifted us, and allow ruthless skeptics to tear 



55 



its dear cross away, and compel us to write " Vale^ 
vale^in eternum, vale^'' over the graves of our dead. 

That there is a vast neglect of -the Bible, even 
by those professing to hold it as the rule of their 
faith and practice, is alas, too true. Its precious ores 
are not by any means well mined by. Christians. 
They go too often, content with plucking here and 
there a flower off the surface soil of Scripture, 
while utterly ignorant of the wealth of fine gold 
lying underneath. 

Some think simply a Sabbath reading will suf- 
fice. Some give it a hurried, listless reading once 
a day. Some yawn over it late at night, when 
nature is imperiously demanding rest, reading it 
as a truce to conscience, not caring to sleep and 
hardly daring to sleep, till they have gone through 
the form of looking down the page of a Bible, all 
the while judging in their honest and secret hearts 
that the Bible is a very dull book. Some, again, 
it is a joy to know, study the word, give it time 
and thought, go searching after its hid treasures, 
make it their daily companion, lift up their prayers 
in its storied speech, get themselves possessed with 
its great thoughts of God, get their memories stor- 
ed with its wondrous truth, get their hearts rav- 
ished with its revelations of the Beloved, get their 
faith fortified with its grand stays and helps : and 



56 



such readers as these — blessed be God — such read- 
ers as these, walk out on the promises, take cling- 
ing and courageous hold of Jesus, are mighty in 
the Scriptures and mighty in prayer and mighty 
with God! O for a whole Church of such Bible 
readers! If we had them, how truth's victories 
would multiply as the drops of the morning! If 
we had them, what human hearts would be cleft 
asunder by the sword of the Spirit! 

Neglecter of the Bible, whoever you are, you 
are shutting up, and turning your back upon, and 
despising the Book of Life. If inclined to be scep- 
tical as to this, the best thing you can do is to read 
the book in a candid, teachable frame of mind. 
You will soon be convinced of its authority, for it 
is self-evidencing. A man once sat down to read 
it an hour each evening with his wife. In a few 
evenings he stopped in the midst of his reading 
and said, " Wife, if this book is true, we are 
wrong." He read on, and ere lono^ said, " Wife, 
if this book is true, we are lost." Riveted to the 
book and deeply anxious, he still read, and soon 
joyfully exclaimed, " Wife, if this book is true, 
we may be saved." It was not many days more 
before they were both led through this door of 
truth into the kingdom of the truth. This is the 
one great end of the book, to tell man of God's 



57 

great salvation. My friend, this is no mean thing. 
There is nothing mean in eternity. There is noth- 
ing Httle in God. There is nothing to be ashamed 
of in a rational concern about a hereafter. You 
know, as I know, that your better and higher na- 
ture is the deathless nature. If God is a reality, and 
the soul is a reality, and you are an immortal being, 
what are you doing with your Bible shut! 

If you do not own this book of books, get it, I 
beg of you. Read it candidly and thoughtfully. 
Read it with an honest desire to be guided by its 
teachings. Read it for a mother's or sister's sake. 
Read it for your souls sake, and truth's, and 
Christ's. Read it, and you may know how wrong 
you are. Read it, and you may know how lost 
you are. Read it, and you may know how you 
may be saved. Read it, and your name may be 
read at last, when God's other books shall be 
opened — read in that Book of Remembrance which 
God keeps of them that fear the Lord and that 
think upon his name. 



III. 
CHRISTIANITY'S CHRIST 



Truly this was the Son of God. — Roman' Centurion. 

My Lord and my God. — The Apostle Thomas. 

All history is incomprehensible without Him. — "Rb:s'AN. 

Here is the urn of destiny, and that urn holds no dead 
ashes. — H. B. Smith. 

The sea ebbs and flows, but the rock remains unmoved. 
— McCheyne. 

As little as humanity will ever be without religion, as 
little will it be without Christ. — Strauss. 

The rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys; 
The chiefest among ten thousand. 

— Solomon's Song. 



CHRISTIANITY'S CHRIST. 



Effects are not without adequate cause. Noth- 
ing was ever begotten of nothing. Institutions 
that get established and buttressed up in the world 
are built on something. They have an origin and 
an originator commensurate with themselves. They 
are not the product of chance. They do not spring 
out of chaos, or legend, or myth, and go at a bound 
to the supremacy of affairs, commanding the alle- 
giance unto death of the best minds of the race. 
Here is Christianity. Whence came it? What is 
it? It is a force in the world, a prodigious force. 
It has revolutionized society. It has lifted man out 
of himself. It has changed the face of the world. 
There it lies, imbedded in more than eighteen cen- 
turies of human history; and history of no mean 
sort — the best record of the race. Buddhism and 
Brahminism are older, and are linked with more 
peoples. Mohammedanism, not so old, has to do 
with a greater multitude. The adherents of these 

61 



62 

systems have outnumbered the adherents of Chris- 
tianity. Numerically they are at the lead. But 
if you weigh men, or weigh nations, there are no 
numbers of either that can be put in the scale 
against Christendom without kicking the beam. 
Christianity has held her own, and made her con- 
quests amidst battles of thought, with discussion at 
white heat. She herself has been a " beam of light 
shot into chaos," irradiating the darkness and re- 
storing order. She has not thrived amid moral 
abominations by wearing pitch upon her garments; 
but her breath has been as a broken alabaster box 
of ointment. Because of her coming, men have been 
ennobled and beautified and given new moods of 
joy. Her truth has held the best mind of humanity 
— held it and possessed it, and gotten the unreluctant 
homage of it, against all and most persistent effort 
of learning and science to make that truth a lie. 
Christianity has withstood all attacks from all foes 
and com.e off victor. There never has been an in- 
stitution so fiercely and bitterly and relentlessly 
opposed. A giant and defiant heathenism, a cor- 
rupt and bigoted priesthood, a persecuting, world- 
conquering state, a proud and reasoning philosophy, 
a subtle and ingenious skepticism, a sneering and 
malignant infidelity, a plausible and self-recovering 
humanitarianism, impelled by the hate and the scorn 



63 



and the pride and the obstinacy of men's natural 
hearts, — these all in succession, and often conjoint- 
ly, — have set themselves to the task of rooting 
Christianity out of the world's life. " The days of 
this hated religion are numbered " they have shout- 
ed, as some fresh foe has entered the arena to make 
it bite the dust. And yet, to-day, millions rest on 
it their dearest hopes; it is flinging its forces, with 
an enthusiasm of energy beyond all precedent, into 
the very centers of heathenism; it is banding the 
world with its lines of light; the sun never sets 
without new record of its conquests ; " our best of 
uttered prayers are in its storied speech ;" our grand- 
est thoughts of God are born of its quickening 
touch; and the best that men know of immortality 
was brought them in the revelation-hour of this 
new gospel. 

Who gave the world all this? Who founded 
such an institution? Whence came Christianity? 
What is its origin? Such a marvel as this is not 
among men without a sufficient cause. We are in 
no trouble to trace its history. It has been too 
mighty a force to be lost sight of. Just about eigh- 
teen hundred years it has been in the world, and 
no more. It has grooved those eighteen hundred 
years by its unmistakable lines of progress. And, 
following these, we are taken back by a path that 



64 



the boldest skeptic does not question, and concern- 
ing which there is no historic doubt — to Palestine 
and Jerusalem. There we find the origin of Chris- 
tianity — the founder of this new religion. He at 
whose coming all the city was moved, saying "Who 
is this?" and concerning whom the multitude said 
in reply, " This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth 
of Galilee" — He is the sufficient cause of this mar- 
vel we call Christianity. Either He, or there is no 
cause, and history is a lie, and men are mocked 
with bubbles and fed on husks. All lines of evi- 
dence converge in the Galilean, the record of whose 
life is in the four gospels. 

Christianity before Him was simply prophecy 
waiting fulfillment, but the prophets all wrote of 
Him. Christianity issued out of Him. There is 
no Christianity away from Him. His personality 
is woven into the very warp and woof of the new 
religion. He can no more be wrested from his 
place in Christianity than Christianity can be wrest- 
ed from a place in history. Take Christ out 
of the gospel, and you take its heart out. He is 
the corner stone upon which all Christian work is 
builded. Remove Him, and the superstructure 
topples to ruin. The prodigious force of Chris- 
tianity comes from the personality of Him who rode 
into Jerusalem upon an ass's colt. This Christ, who- 



65 



ever He is, has not only originated a system, but He 
has put Himself into it, as its very life, and soul, 
and power. Other men have established systems, 
but their personal force has not gone down into 
them. But so thoroughly, so absolutely, is Christ 
in the Christian system, that it may be truly said, 
What Christianity has done Christ has done; what 
Christianity professes to do, Christ professes to do. 
If Christianity reveals a way, Christ is the way. If 
Christianity teaches truth, Christ is the truth. If 
Christianity brings life, Christ is the life. About the 
person of Jesus of Nazareth the hottest of the bat- 
tle between the champions and the opponents of 
Christianity has raged. This very hour, millions 
would die for him. 

Who is this Christ, therefore, founding Chris- 
tianity, and permeating it with a, personal force 
that has augmented with the passage of centuries, 
swaying men's minds and hearts to-day, over all the 
world, with incomparable and peerless supremacy ? 

He was a man. He had flesh and bones. He 
was born in Bethlehem, was raised in Nazareth, 
and grew to manhood, mcreasing in wisdom and 
stature, and in favor with God and man. He ate, 
and slept, and lived very much as other men. He 
wearied of toil, and rested. He had special friend- 
ships. He sighed and wept. At a comparatively 

9 



66 



early age he was crucified and buried. Thus far, 
all agree. The historic Christ has undoubted place 
in the world. That such a being lived and died is 
not a subject of controversy. But was He only a 
man? Let us see. 

Se was a teacher. " Never man spake like this 
man." This was the testimony of His enemies. 
They wondered at the gracious words which pro- 
ceeded out of His mouth. And this is not report. 
We do not rely upon legend or tradition for the 
statement. The words at which men marveled 
are here in the four gospels. The instruction 
that seemed so unlike the talk of other men — the 
teachings of Jesus of Nazareth — are on record; and 
men read them to-day and marvel still. The civ- 
ilization of successive and ever advancing centuries 
has produced no man to speak like this man. Down 
into the depths of His thought we still go for hid- 
den treasures of wisdom. 

Other men, it is true, have been teachers as well 
as He. There have been prophets, sent of God, 
with great truths to preach. There have been 
philosophers, in advance of their age, enunciating 
principles wonderfully grand and wonderfully pure 
— profound and imperishable truth; but they have 
been overtaken and passed. Their thought has 
been mastered, and thinking has been afterward 



67 

done in fields they never traversed. But no one 
has ever yet been in advance of the teachings of the 
GaHlean. Men still study His v^ords and marvel 
as of old, saying-, "Never man spake like this man." 
" Try Him as we try other teachers, " — says one 
who nevertheless denies the supernatural in Christ, 
and charges the Church with making a God 
of Him — " Try Him as vs^e try other teachers. 
They deliver their word, find a few waiting for 
the consolation, who accept the new tidings, follow 
the new method, and soon go beyond their teacher, 
though less mighty minds than He. Such is the 
case with each founder of a school in philosophy, 
each sect in religion. Though humble men, we 
see what Socrates and Luther never saw. But 
eighteen centuries have passed since the sun of hu- 
manity rose so high in Jesus. What man, what 
sect, what Church has mastered His thought, com- 
prehended His method, and so fully applied it to 
life." 

He spake simply. It was not involved and la- 
bored speech that so captivated the common people. 
He spake with precision. His utterances were de- 
terminate. It w^as not with an "if" or a " perad- 
venture" that he brought truth to men. He spake 
always with the certainty of absolute knowledge, 
and as out of the depths of His own being. He 



68 



spa^e, too, with an apparent ease and opulence of 
resources, and with a freedom and famiHarity that 
betokened unclouded sight into the mysterious 
realms of His thought. He spake authoritatively, 
in the calm consciousness of reserved and measure- 
less power, and as one who felt, however His doc- 
trine was received, and however men heaped their 
scorn upon it, it would, even as the word of God, 
abide forever. No wonder Jerusalem was stirred 
at His coming, and cried out, " Who is this? '* No 
wonder they marveled at His speech, and said, 
" Whence hath this man this wisdom ?" Did they 
not know Him ? Was He not the carpenter's son ? 
Were they not familiar with His life? Had they 
not seen Him at His trade? And can any good 
thing come out of Nazareth? " Whence hath this 
man this wisdom? " Whence, indeed! Nazareth 
was no Athens. There was no school of prophets 
there. Philosophy had no seat in that Judean town, 
wicked to a proverb. How came it about, that this 
son of toil, with no advantages of learning and no 
means of culture, flamed at once into the profound- 
est of the world's teachers, struck fearlessly out into 
realms of truth, of whose existence the wisest sages 
had not even guessed, and poured out a doctrine 
beautiful as the light, sublime as heaven, and true 
as God. He was a man, but was He only a man? 



69 



He was an examplar. Back of His speech was 
a life. Behind His marvelous doctrine was a mar- 
velous character. His deed was as pure as His 
word, and both were without spot or blemish. He 
united in Himself " the sublimest precepts and the 
divinest practices. " In an age of gross wicked- 
ness, amid corruption that had changed the house 
of God to a den of thieves, and transformed wor- 
shipers there into "deceitful hucksters of salva- 
tion, " this pure soul challenged men to prove that 
He was pitched with the defiling touch of the sur- 
rounding iniquity. He charged the Jews with 
being of their father, the devil, and with doing their 
father's lusts, and followed it up with the question, 
"Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" Pollu- 
tion touched the hem of His garment and blos- 
somed into purity, but the touch left no stain upon 
His raiment. " I do always those things that please 
the Father, " said He. " The prince of this world 
cometh, and hath nothing in me, " is His own calm 
assertion of sinlessness. He never repented, for 
He had nothing to repent of. He wept, but for 
the sins of others, not for his own. He summed up 
all His instruction in Himself, and said to the pol- 
luted and the lost, " I am the way — follow me. " 
He thus held up Himself as the model of all possi- 
ble attainment in moral exeellence. And even 



70 



publicans and harlots grew away from their plague 
of sin, as they got closer and closer to this sinless 
Nazarene. 

Now other men have lived and died, illustrious for 
their probity and moral uprightness. . But the 
purest, the saintliest, the most like God, have re- 
vealed imperfection, and confessed it. Christ, on 
the contrary, claimed a perfectly sinless agreement 
of His will with the will of the Father. "I do 
always those things which please Him. " He says 
to men everywhere, "Except ye repent, ye shall 
all likewise perish;" yet He never repents. He 
places Himself before men as the absolute summit 
of human perfection, the single example, the light 
of the world. Again the question returns. Who 
is this ? He is the one spotless soul in the succes- 
sive millions of the race. He is that, or His gospel 
is a contradiction and Himself the fittest subject for 
the scorn he rained upon hypocrisy and pretense. 
How came innocence and God-likeness to be mir- 
rored there in that surrounding corruption, if Christ 
was " genuinely hum.an " and no more? He was 
a man, but was he only a man? 

He was a miracle worker. His works aston- 
ished men, as well as His words. This young 
Galilean healed the sick, cleansed lepers, gave 
sight to the blind, raised the dead. By reason of 



71 



this, perhaps even more than because of His 
marvelous doctrine, there v^^ent a fame abroad 
of Him. And so flocked the multitude at one 
time to see this doer of wonderful w^orks tliat 
His enemies, in consternation, said, " What do 
we? For this Man doeth many miracles. Be- 
hold, the world is gone after Him. " 

He rested His claim to belief upon His works. 
He challenged investigation of them. He said to 
men, " Though ye believe not Me, believe the 
works; and believe Me, for the very works' sake." 
He distinctly and unequivocally declared that no 
other man had done among men the works which 
He had done. 

It is true, other men have performed miracles. 
Prophets and apostles have worked the works of 
God. But it has always been in distinct recogni- 
tion of their dependence, with acknowledgment 
that the miraculous power was delegated and de 
rived. It has been in the name and by the author- 
ity of a superior being. But this Galilean miracle- 
worker did His wonders as if in the opulence of 
His own resources, and by the might that was in 
Himself alone. " I say unto thee, arise ! " "I will, 
be thou clean! " " Lazarus, come forth." These 
are the mandates of inherent and conscious power. 
l"'here is no dependence here. And no other man 



72 ^ CKRISnANIlT's CHRIST. 

has thus worked the works of God. I know all 
this is questioned. I know the very possibility of 
proving Christ a miracle-worker is doubted and 
denied; but it is at the utter disregard of all con- 
sistency. Listen, and see if what I say is not true. 

What are the records of the miracles ? Are they 
" myths or legendary tales that grew up out of the 
story-telling and marveling habit of the disciples 
of Christ? " Were these miraculous stories gener- 
ated within the period of a few years after Christ's 
death? Then it was done by mythologic dreamers 
of childish credulity, who nevertheless have pre- 
served along with these vagaries and intermingled 
with them the record of the only perfect human 
character the world has ever known, and a system 
of teachings unaffected by a single error, and tran- 
scending the dreams of all sages and the talk of all 
philosophers. 

Surely this is impossible of belief. That such a 
character and such teachings as His are found in 
the four gospels is convincing evidence of the gen- 
uineness of the record of the miracles. Ah, Christ 
Himself is the miracle among the miracles — the 
miracle of all ages. And so long as He and His 
work are imbedded in the world's thought and life, 
men will believe in the divine origin of ^he Chris- 
tian religion. Christianity in the person of Christ 



73 

is its own evidence. His presence is proof of its 
being from God. * 

Strauss, who summarily rejects all miracles and 
prophecies as simply impossible, nevertheless says 
of Jesus, "He remains the highest model of relig- 
ion w ithin the reach of our thought, and no per- 
fect piety is possible without His presence in the 
heart." 

Diderot, the French atheistical philosopher, said, 
n the presence of a company of infidels, " I defy 
you all, as many as are here, to prepare a tale so 
simple, and at the same time so sublime and so 
touching, as the tale of the passion and death of 
Jesus." 

Rousseau, in the same confession where he 
speaks of the gospel as "full of incredible things," 
" repugnant to reason," says, " Is it possible that 
a book at once so simple and so sublime should be 
the work of man ? Is it possible that the sacred 
personage whose history it contains should be him- 
self a mere man? Where is the man, where the 
philosopher, who could live and die without weak- 
ness and without ostentation? If the life and death 
of Socrates were those of a sage, the life and death 
of Jesus were those of a God." 

Theodore Parker, who says of Jesus that in cer- 
tain, as in marvelous works, " Hercules was his 
lO 



74 



equal and Vishnu his superior," nevertheless adds, 
"Consider what a wc^k His words and deeds have 
wrought in the world. Remember that the great- 
est minds have seen no farther, and added nothing 
to the doctrines of religion; that the richest hearts 
have felt no deeper, and added nothing to the sen- 
timent of religion; have set no loftier aim, no truer 
method than His of perfect love to God and man. 
Measure Him by the shadow He has cast into the 
world — no, by the light He has shed upon it. Shall 
we be to-M that such a rnan never lived — that the 
whole story is a lie? Suppose that Plato and 
Newton had never lived. But who did their won- 
ders" and thought their thoughts ? It takes a New- 
ton to forge a Newton. What man could have 
fabricated Jesus ? None but a Jesus." 

And Renan, repudiating the supernatural in the 
recorded life of Jesus, and compelled in the re- 
pudiation to speak of Christ as acting on "false 
views," with much " self-deception," a miracle- 
worker and exorcist in spite of himself, and only 
for the purpose of innocent fraud, nevertheless says 
of Jesus, " He founded the pure worship, of no age 
or no clime, which shall be that of all lofty souls 
to the end of time." "Repose now in Thy glory, 
noble founder! Thy work is finished. Thy divini- 
ty is established. Fear no more to see the edifice 



75 



of Thy labors fall by any fault. Henceforth, be- 
yond the range of frailty, Thou shalt witness from 
the heights of divine peace the infinite results of 
Thine acts. For thousands of years the world will 
defend Thee. Banner of our contests, Thou shalt 
be the standard about which the hottest battle will 
be given. A thousand times more alive, a thous- 
and times more beloved since Thy death than dur- 
ing Thy passage here below. Thou shalt become 
the corner-stone of humanity so entirely that to 
tear Thy name from this world would be to rend 
it from its foundations. Complete conqueror of 
death, take possession of Thy kingdom, whither 
shall follow Thee by the royal road which Thou 
hast traced, ages of worshipers." 

Can eulogy go farther than this? Mind you, it 
is wrung from the enemies of Christianity. They 
are forced to say what shall be done with Christian- 
ity's Christ; for here He is in the four gospels. 
They must eulogize Him. He compels the hom- 
age by His peerless record. So they say, " His di- 
vinity is established"; they make Him " the cor- 
8er-stone of humanity," and give Him " ages of 
worshipers ;" they say " the greatest minds have 
seen no farther," that whatever the coming sur- 
prise, "He will never be surpassed;" they make no 
"perfect piety" possible "without His presence in 



76 



the heart," and declare His life and death to be 
those of a God: they do all this, and lift Him ut- 
terly out of the order of nature, and yet make it 
impossible for Him to do anything out of the order 
of nature. They admit this greatest of all mira- 
cles — such a character, in such an age, pouring out 
such a doctrine; and yet deny the miracles He 
wrought! How came such a perfect character, so 
perfectly portrayed, in such an age and country, 
and by such writers — how came it there in the 
New Testament? If it was not real, then those 
four plain men devised and arranged together and 
gave to the world what it has been impossible for 
any genius of any age to portray. They did that, 
and simply nothing else. They concocted a life 
of Christ, the four of them together, dove-tailed 
their narrative so as to make the most consummate 
portraiture in all literature — did that and died. 
Surely the miracle of all ages is this — that such a 
Being is in the gospel record; one who ever since 
that record was written has been directing the 
world's life, shaping the world's history, command- 
ing the world's thought, subduing the world's 
kingdoms, overthrowing the world's idolatries. He 
was a man. But was He only a man? 

He was a martyr. He witnessed to the truth, and 
sealed the testimony with His blood. He was not a 



Christianity's cheist. 77 

prophet of smooth things. Holy and full of love as 
He was, the antagonism of His nature to evil was 
deep and uncompromising. He had indignation at 
the world's wrong. He flashed out His rebukes of 
hypocrisy and Pharisaic pride with a burning ear- 
nestness and an unmasking fidelity that won him 
no favor among the wearers of broad phylacteries 
and the children of the devil. They hated Him 
and hated His doctrine. They sought to lay their 
hands upon Him and put Him to death. At last 
they found their opportunity and seized it. And 
after only three years of public ministry, Christ 
suffered martyrdom. His enemies seized Him, 
went through with a mockery of trial, secured sen- 
tence of condemnation, and killed Him. He died 
with a prayer upon His lips for His murderers. 

If this were all, His martyrdom would not be 
singular. For other men have died because of 
their fidelity to the truth. Prophets of God are 
often doomed to seal their testimony with blood. 
By the stake and the cross, by the rack and tlie 
fagot, many heroic souls have witnessed to the truth, 
and stood for its vindication even unto death. And 
they have done it, too, in such sustained trumph and 
such joy of their martyrdom that their crosses have 
seemed to them but steps into heaven, the ascend- 
ing flames but chariots of fire by which they were 



78 Christianity's cheist. 

borne up to God. So that in the mere matter of 
physical suffering in the hour of death, there have 
been martyrs who have seemed to endure their m'ar- 
tyrdom v^ith even greater heroism than Christ. 
If this were all, therefore, His death would not be 
singular. But it is not all. 

He predicts his own death. He talks calmly of 
it. Yes, He makes it the basis of all His triumphs^ 
He puts beforehand, as the sign and pledge of vic- 
tory, what all other men would regard as the token 
of utter defeat. He declares that the grand idea o{ 
His mission is the establishment of a kingdom — a 
kingdom over men's minds, a universal kingdom, 
and that this kingdom is to spread — but not in a day, 
not in a lifetime. He, Himself, is to die; but His 
death is to be the grand attractive power by which 
men are to be influenced to yield ta His suprema- 
cy. " And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men 
unto me," is the astonishing declaration of this car- 
penter of Galilee. And this He said, signifying 
what death he should die. " Except a corn of 
wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth 
alone," is His way of telling those about Him of his 
marvelous expectation, viz., that death, with Him, 
is to be the sowing before a great harvest, the seed 
of His great empire. What martyr, in prospect of 
martyrdom, ever ventured upon such ground as 



79 



this? But this uneducated village mechanic goes 
farther still. He gathers a few friends in an upper 
room at Jerusalem and celebrates there the Jewish 
Passover. He takes the Paschal cup and says to 
those present, "Divide it among yourselves; 
break it up ; do with it as you please ; I abrogate 
the feast. I set aside this solemn institution, re- 
vered though it has been, as ordained of God, and 
established for centuries. I call you now to the 
celebration of another feast." And He takes bread 
and blesses and breaks it, saying, " This is My 
body which is given for you." He takes wme and 
pours it out, saying, " This is my blood which is 
shed for you. This do in remembrance of Me." 
He here puts away forever a religious custom, "in- 
terwoven with all the policies of the state and all 
the feelings of the fireside," and substitutes — what? 
A feast to perpetuate the memory of His own 
death, the elements of which symbolize His broken 
body and shed blood. What His enemies are seek- 
ing for and are bent on with malice of hell in their 
hearts, He calmly in that upper room takes steps 
to have remembered forever. What the world 
counts ignominious and shameful He means shall 
be counted by His friends a glory and honor. He 
thus undertakes utterly to reverse the judgment 
of mankind concerning His crucifixion, and to make 



80 



of His martyrdom the most significant and most 
meaning fact in his marvelous career, and the one 
of all others to be most fondly and most holily re- 
membered. 

Is there not something here transcending any 
human example? Other men have said, "If I could 
only live I would establish and perpetuate an em- 
pire." This Christ of Galilee says, " My death- 
shall do it." Other martyrs have died in simple 
fidelity to truth. This martyr dies that He may 
make His truth mighty over all hearts. He was a 
man, but was He only a man? 

Think again. This Galilean came forth amidst 
the moral darkness of a corrupt age. He grew to 
manhood in a town of ill-repute. He left His 
work-shop at the age of thirty, and forthwith He 
became author and founder of a religion so pure, it 
might have had birth in heaven of God. He placed 
himself at the head of Christianity, permeated it 
with His personal force, and for eighteen centuries 
that force has been augmenting until millions now 
yield Him the unreluctant homage of their fondest 
affections. This artisan, moreover, fresh from His 
.oil, in three years, gave the world the sublimest 
doctrines of the soul, of immortality, of God and 
His fatherhood, of pardon and reconciliation. He 
discoursed of these with an ease and freedom, with 



81 



a spiritual opulence and power, with a beauty and 
fullness and precision and authority, that more 
than realized the dream of sages and prophets. 
Along with these imperishable ideas, he brought 
before men an unsullied, spotless life — a soul un- 
soiled by evil. He stands as the ideal of hu- 
manity — the one perfect example of all time. 
He did many mighty and miraculous works, and 
He did them by His own inherent and unborrowed 
power. There the record of the miracles is in the 
record of His life. The miraculous can not be torn 
away without tearing Christ away. The marvel 
and miracle are as much in the words as in the 
works. He did those wonders, who thought those 
thoughts. And when He died His martyr's death, 
He felt and He said that His dying should be the 
sign and pledge of His world-wide triumph. 

" Who is this ?" asked the multitude at Jerusa- 
lem. " Who is this ?" I ask to-day. He is the 
carpenter's son, but is He no more? Could He have 
lifted Himself so out of the succession of men, out 
of the line of nature, if He had been only human? 
Could He have stood at the head of the world for 
eighteen hundred years, and yet be nothing more 
than the son of Joseph and Mary? 

It has been recently affirmed in one of our pub- 
lic prints that Krishnu, a god of the Hindoos, the 

II 



incarnation of Vishmi, is a " savior almost exactly 
like ours and six hundred years older." What shall 
be thought of this affirmation in the face of these 
two facts: First, that modern scholarship places 
the origin of these fictions of Krishnu, that bear 
any resemblance at all to Christ, far within the 
Christian era. Second, that this Hindoo god Krish- 
nu is a moral monster; that, while many of the 
teachings attributed to him have a high morality, 
he is represented as sporting in lascivious and lust- 
ful license; that the worst scenes of his life are not 
fit to be told; that entire dependence on him by 
his worshipers not only obviates the necessity of 
virtue but sanctifies vice; and that he is responsi- 
ble for some of the most licentious of all the Hin- 
doo feasts. 

And yet we are asked " to explain why our 
Christ is the only true savior, when the Hindoos 
have one almost exactly like ours and six hundred 
years older!" Are these the shifts to which infi- 
delity is driven? And is this the way in which an 
honest skepticism would meet the intelligence and 
decency of our time? If Christ was like Krishnu, 
then truth lies, honesty cheats, sincerity deceives, 
purity defiles. As well might it be said black is 
white, and up is down, and right is wrong, and 
something is nothing. No. Christ is alone. The 



83 



most destructive criticism has not been able to de- 
throne Him as the incarnation of perfect hohness. 
The most scholarly research has been unable to 
find any human conception to compare with Him. 
The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief 
break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme 
model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the 
weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one 
divine flower in the garden of God ! 

Strange things meet in him! With the most 
boundless self-assertion, He is the very model of hu- 
mility. He offers forgiveness; He never seeks it. 
He exhibits superhuman power, yet with all the 
sweet and attractive beauty of gentleness. He says 
that which only God could know was true. He 
does that which only God has a right to do. If 
He did not dwell in the bosom of God, if He was 
not on equality with GoJ, then his forgiveness of 
sins and his talk about power over his own life to 
lay it down and to take it again, and his general 
assumption of divine prerogatives, was blasphemy. 
Browning has well said: 

"If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of man, 

Mere man — the first and best, but nothing more; 

Account Him for reward of what he was, 

Now and forever wretchedest of all. 

Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, 

Or Lost!" 



84 CHEiSTiANirr's cheist. 

There is no middle ground. Christ was either 
the grandest, guiltiest of impostors, by a marvel- 
ous and most subtle refinement of wickedness, or 
he was God " manifest in the flesh." Only by this 
latter belief do we enter into the higher harmonies 
of His person, where every seeming contradiction 
vanishes away, and the blaze of miracles in which 
He was born and lived and died, seems but the nat- 
ural and fitting manifestation attending His coming, 
and stay and departure. 

" He is beside himself," said the men of the gar- 
nished sepulchre sort. " He hath a devil !" shouted 
the phylacteried Pharisees. "He is mad! He is 
in league with Beelzebub! He is guilty of death!" 
charged the shriveled conservators of the old relig- 
ion. " Thou art the son of the living God !" rev- 
erently said an unlettered fisherman, who had been 
summoned by this divine Teacher to a life divine 
and beautiful. Which was right, the Pharisees 
or the fisherman? Let Christianity answer with 
her centuries of peerless history. Let the Chris- 
tian world answer which to-day, worshiping 
Him equally with the Father, names Him Son of 
God! Let the millions of hearts answer that 
think of Him in each returning Christmas time as 
the divinest gift with which humanity has ever 
been blessed. Peter's reverent confession is the 



85 



accepted creed of Christendom. But you may 
look, and you will not find, the world over, a de- 
scendant of the Pharisees who believes Christ was 
beside himself and leagued with the devil. 

Leagued with the devil, indeed, when he came 
to destroy the works of the devil ! Is Satan divi- 
ded against himself? Shall a devil cast out devils ? 
No! This teacher and exemplar and miracle-work- 
er and martyr, came and taught, and lived and 
died, to meet a deep necessity. He saw the woe 
into which man had plunged. He saw the ruin 
sin had made. The woe was too deep for human 
specific. The ruin was that of an immortal soul. 
The ruin was wrought in the power of an endless 
death. So this Christ came, as He needed to come 
to repair the ruin, with " the power of an endless 
life." The ruin was a thinking ruin, the ruin of a 
soul-temple; and so he came to restore it who first 
made the immortal temple. And the builder and 
maker was God! O, how many temples have been 
builded anew by this divine Architect? Out of how 
man} hearts He has sent evil possessions, that le- 
gions of angels might come in. 

Sinner, if thou knewest the gift of God, and 
who it is that saith to thee, "Behold, I stand at the 
door and knock," thou wouldst have opened the 
gates of thy ruined temple long ago, to let in this 



86 



heavenly builder. Listen now. He knocks again. 
Here, in the hush of this still hour, He waits 
to be received and welcomed. Peace like a river, 
joy such as angels do not know, hope full of an 
ever-brightening and evermore blessed immortali- 
ty — all heavenly benediction would be thine — " if 
thou knewest the gift of Godl" 



IV. 

CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF 
DEFINITENESS. 



I know whom I have laelieved.— Paul. 

Christianitj is more than history. It is also a system of 
truths. Every event which its history records, either is a 
'jruth, or suggests a truth, or expresses a truth, which man 
needs to assent to or to put into practice. — Noah Ported, 

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten 
Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life. For God sent not His Son into 
the world to condemn the world, but that the world through 
Him might be saved. — Jesus Christ. 

The two beings the most nearly related to each other in the 
whole universe — God and man — who were so awfully es- 
tranged, are brought together reconciled. — Young. 



CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITE- 
NESS. 



What is Christianity ? Who are Christians ? Is 
there an answer possible to these questions that 
shall be at the same time definite and scriptural ? 
One would think there ought to be. Men do not 
commonly build on shadows. Vagueness is a poor 
solid for feet of faith. To commit one's self to a 
gospel of indefiniteness is like taking a leap into the 
dark. Besides, vague truths get no deathless hold 
of consciences or hearts. It is only for definite 
convictions men are willing to die. They will not 
risk much on a "perhaps." They cannot rest much 
in a preadventure. The Christ upon whom they 
hang their dearest hopes must not be in a haze. 
" I know whom I have belived," is the creed of all 
stalwart souls. The faith that conquers is the faith 
that grasps something, and that can tell what it is. 

Here is Christianity. It has done some revo- 
lutionary things in the world. It makes some im- 
perious claims. We have listened to its challenge. 
89 12 



90 cheistia:nity a gospel of definiteness. 

We have looked at its book of instructions. We 
have considered who Christ is, its founder. Does 
this Christ come " filled v\^ith the spirit and words of 
indefiniteness ?" Is this book so " wrapped in the 
clouds of a great mystery," and has it a voice so 
uncertain, " uttering only vague terms," that we 
are barred forever from " the hope of knowing in 
this world what Christ was, what heaven and hell 
are, and who will go at last to either place?" 

So it has been lately said ; and we are bidden, 
with soothing balm and some touches of Oriental 
rhetoric, to " sleep sweetly in the midst of a grave 
mystery," for "only in a vague Christianity can we 
find peace." My friends, if this be true, we have 
a revelation that reveals nothing, we have an army 
without a battle-cry, a church without fixed beliefs, 
doctrines dissolving in mist, shadow for substance, 
a jelly-fish theology, a gospel of mush. 

But is it true? Is this the ring of that glorious 
gospel of the blessed God, of which the goodly com- 
pany of the apostles spoke and wrote with such 
passionate fervor? It may do for a lullaby. But 
life is a battle, not a hymn. And when the strug- 
gle is ended, and men walk out toward eternity, 
they want to know where they are placing their 
feet! 

What is Christianity? Who are Christians? It 



CHKISTIANITT A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 91 

is time the sharp outlines of the old faith were cut 
again in the public mind and stamped again upon 
the public conscience. Thomas Buckle and Herbert 
Spencer are seriously classed among the most 
brilliant writers in the Christian ranks of our age. 
Men who look upon the Bible as they look upon 
Plato's "Phaedo," or the Koran of Mohammed, or 
the writings of Confucius, do not hesitate to call 
themselves Christians. They do not worship the 
Bible, nor yet Christ. They do not go to church. 
What of that? The great thing is to be a Chris- 
tian. We have a so-called " absolute Christianity," 
a "broad-church Christianity," a "liberal Christi- 
anity," and just now a " coming Christianity," of 
which "indefiniteness is to be the quality." But 
can a man believe nothing and be a Christian? Is 
Christianity summed up in gentlemanliness and 
good breeding, and neighborly kindness, and an 
upright life? Or may a man be graceful and yet 
graceless? If it be said that Christianity is a life, 
must not a life have some law? Life for what? 
For whom? To what ends? On what basis? 
Rightly to define Christian life is clearly to define 
Christianity. 

Now if Christianity has any vital fundamental 
ideas, any central and essential truths, where 
should we look for them? Manifestly, in Chris- 



92 CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 

tianity's book, the Bible, and to Christianity's 
founder, Christ. Away, then, with theories, and 
fancies, and guesses and wishes. Let us go to the 
record. Here is the Book. Here speaks the 
Christ. Let us see what they have to say, and 
weigh our words as those who are buying the 
truth. 

In the Book, by the Christ, John 3 : 14-17, we find 
these words ; "As Moses Hfted up the serpent in the 
wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted 
up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not 
perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the 
world that He gave his only begotten Son that 
whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but 
have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son 
into the world to condemn the world, but that the 
world through Him might be saved." 

Luther called these words of Christ " the Bible 
in miniature." They have been deemed by the 
devout and scholarly of the Christian ages an 
epitome of the gospel. If there be any soul to 
Christianity, it is here. 

They give us, first of all, the source of Chris- 
tianity. It was born of God's great heart of love. 
'' God so loved the world." Remember that, my 
friends, when men rail at these scriptures, and call 
the gospel a damnation, and God a tyrant. The 



CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 93 

words next g-ive us the person sent — " the Son of 
Man," « the Son of God." Next, the purpose of 
the sendinor — salvation, " that the world through 
Him might be saved." Next, the character of the 
salvation — not from misfortune, from ignorance, 
from trouble, but from death, that men " should not 
perish ;" and as " not to perish" has for its expressed 
and exact equivalent "everlasting life," the exact 
equivalent of "to perish" must be everlasting 
death. Next, the words give us the necessary 
ground and way of salvation, Christ's sacrifice unto 
death on the cross — "even so must the Son of Man 
be lifted up." Next and last, the words give us the 
subjects of salvation — "whosoever believeth in 
Him," i. e., in this Son of Man lifted up on the 
cross. Here then we have the person of the 
Savior, and the purpose, the character, the ground, 
and the subjects of His salvation; or yesus Christy 
Son of Man and Son of God, the fower unto 
salvation from endless death, by atoning' sacrifce 
through faith. 

This, I make bold to say, is the essential sub- 
stance of Christianity. Wrapped up in this preg- 
nant statement are all its central and fundamental 
truths. There are other truths, but they are subor- 
dinate. These are chief and vital. These must 
be preached if Christ is preached. I know we are 



94 CHRISTIAOTiTY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 

charged with foisting dry and dead doctrines on 
the church In place of the graces and chanties and 
duties of a practical piety. I know we are charged 
with twisting Christianity from its Christ-fashioned 
original of practical and beautifying life into soul- 
less and un-Christ-like creeds. Well, here is our 
creed. There is some definiteness about it, surely. 
Let us see if it is un-Christ-like. Let us see if the 
gospel is not ribbed all about and InteriDcnetrated 
through and through with these grand redemptive 
thoughts. Let us see if this is not the golden 
thread upon which all God's precious promises are 
strung. 

Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God, the 
power unto salvation from endless death by atoning 
sacrifice through faith. We will take this sentence 
to pieces, and undertake to explain and justify 
each part by an appeal to the four gospels. 

I. The person, Jesus Christ. At the very basis 
of any true notion of Christianity must be a true 
notion of Christ. Christianity without Christ 
would be a body without a soul, light without a 
sun, history without civilization, a universe without 
a God. Go and " untwist all the beams of light in 
the sky," and get at and expunge one of the colors 
fixed there of God! Let an army be set to chang- 
inof the smallest truth of mathematics! Either 



CimiSTIANITT A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 95 

would be as easy as getting the person of Christ 
out of the gospel. But what kind of a person is 
He? How was He constituted who is called 
Christ? A true conception of Him makes the 
whole realm of Christian truth luminous. Wrong 
view here is the secret and source of wrong view 
as to well-nigh all else in the Christian system. 
First, as " Son of Man," He was perfect in His 
humanity, absolutely without flaw, a real man of 
body, soul, and spirit; tempted, tried, and touched 
with the feeling of human infirmities, yet without 
sin. If He was a sinner, the whole Christian 
scheme falls. If He ever sinned He needed a 
Savior, and could not therefore even save Himself. 
He claimed sinlessness. " I do always those things 
which please the Father." " The prince of this 
world cometh and hath nothing in Me." He 
challenged His enemies to convince Him of sin. 
He never uttered a word of self-reproach. Not 
one sign did He ever give, not one word ever fell 
from His lips, either to man or to God, which ex- 
pressed or implied the sense of a single defect. 
And yet, though He pronounced all other men sin- 
ners, and said He Himself was absolutely without 
sin, He maintained the merit of most peculiar 
modesty, and of all men has been regarded as "the 
meek and lowly of heart." No one ever charged 



96 CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFIOTTENESS. 

Him with conceit. Put these things together — this 
matchless claim and this unchallenged, everywhere 
conceded, and matchless modesty — and tell me, was 
Christ a sinner? If a sinner. He knew He was. 
But such hypocrisy, for such purpose, to unfold a 
character of beauty and harmony without the ap- 
proach of rivalry among the sons of men, is simply 
impossible of belief. No. Christ was the advent 
of a perfect man. Behold the Lamb without blem- 
ish and without spot, the Holy One, the Just, who 
did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, 
harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners. But all 
the truth concerning Christ is not told when this 
is told. 

As " Son of God, " Christ was perfect in His 
divinity — divine-human, God manifest in the flesh. 
It is not my purpose, now, to go into a critical ex- 
egesis and analysis of single texts to prove that this 
is the teaching of the gospels. Let learning fortify 
the evidence by such minute and careful dissection. 
But the gospel biography of Jesus, taken as. a 
w^hole, is what I would ask you to look at. And 
instead of setting forth the beautiful and harmoni- 
ous and peerless life which even Christ's enemies 
concede is there, that biography is a jumble of ab- 
surdities, and full of utterly Irreconcilable state- 
ments, if Jesus be not God. Group together the 



CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 97 

personal assertions and claims of Jesus, and see. 
*' He distinctly, repeatedly, energetically preaches 
Himself." He says; " I am the bread of life. " "I 
am the living bread that came down from heaven." 
" I am the light of the v^orld." " I am the way, 
the truth, the life. " Not " I am come to show the 
the way. " "I Myself am the way. " Not to 
teach truth. "I Myself am the truth. " Not 
to give life. " I Myself am the life." He says, 
" If ye ask any thing in My name I will do it. " 
He claims to be the lord of the realm of death. He 
will Himself awake the sleeping dead. All 
that are in their graves shall hear his voice. He 
encourages men to trust in Him as they trust in 
God ; to believe in Him as they believe in God ; to 
honor Him as they honor God. He commands, 
He does not simply invite, discipleship. Men re- 
ceive His message by giving themselves up to Him. 
They reject it by rejecting Him. No rival claim, 
no natural affection, may interpose between Himself 
and the soul of one who would be His disciple. He 
lays His hand upon all the dearest and most tender 
relationships of life, upon all the fondest and most 
treasured loves of the human soul, and demands a 
precedent and superior love, saying, " He that 
loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy 
of Me." All radiates from Himself. All converges 

13 



98 CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 

toward Himself. He is the supreme Lord of Life. 
He distinctly claims such lordship. He asserts 
equality with the Father, and for this the Jews 
take up stones to stone Him for blasphemy, " Be- 
cause, " said they, " that Thou being a man makest 
Thyself God." Jesus does not deny that He 
claimed equality with God, but He does deny that 
this was blasphemy. It would have been that, 
or the raving of a demented enthusiast, if He were 
not divine. He claims divine prerogatives, assert- 
ing the same power for Himself that He asserts 
for the Father. He accepts without rebuke the 
glowing confession of Thomas, " My Lord and 
my God. " 

Now put any mere creature — any purely 
human teacher, the noblest and the best — to 
saying these things. Let him come to the 
front, ye deniers of the divine incarnation; place 
him before the world. It is held that other men 
have said as divine things as Jesus. It is held that 
the world is outgrowing His talk; that His religion, 
like all others, must give way to human develop- 
ment; that Christianity is but one step onward in 
humanity's progress, and by no means the last. 
Produce the sage, then, the philosopher, the school- 
man, the scientist, who will say to men, " Fol- 
low me. Believe in me. I am the light of the 



CHKISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 99 

world. Ye are from beneath. I am from above. 
Behold a greater than Solomon is here. I have 
power to lay down my life and to take it again. I 
am that living bread of which if any man eat 
he shall live forever. It is not possible to love 
God and not love me. And no man can come 
to God but by me. " Do we not know that no 
human being on earth could set up the least 
of these astounding pretensions without win- 
ning the pity or the contempt of mankind ? 
Yet from Jesus Christ they come over and over 
again. And they do not surprise us nor give rise 
to the least feeling of incongruity. Nay, human 
hearts read the gospel record and connect with 
Him who made these transcendent and awful claims 
the rarest and sweetest humility that ever blos- 
somed in character among all the sons of men. 
This is simply and absolutely impossible on any 
other ground than that Christ is the divine man and 
the incarnate God in one undivided person. This, 
therefore, is the person sent of the Father — God 
manifest in the flesh. 

2. But such a person must be thus constituted for 
somxC great reason. God is manifest in the flesh 
for a purpose. What is this purpose? Christ tells 
us. " God sent His Son into the world that the 
world through Him might be saved. " He says 



100 CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 

elsewhere, " The Son of Man is come to save. " 
He says again of His people, " I give unto them 
eternal life." " Those that come to Me shall never 
iperish. " " Whosoever believethin Me shall have 
everlasting life." A name is given Him out of 
heaven, that distinctly declares His mission. He 
is called "Jesus," Savior. Christ is therefore a 
power unto salvation. Christ did not come simply 
or mainly with a system of education. Christianity 
is no scheme of moral reform, such as other teachers 
have brought to the world. Jesus did not come to 
teach truth, as if that were all men needed. That 
would imply the possibility of educating the soul 
out of its difficulty and doom. He came for rescue. 
If Christianity were only a development, then 
Christ was not needed. If Christianity were only 
a scheme of morals, then the divine incarnation 
was a thing superfluous. Some great need must 
be found to match that great provision. Any crea- 
ture of God, from any world of His, could have been 
sent to tell us the truth, or to effect reform, if that 
were all that was had in view in Christ's coming. 
It was not all. Christ came to save. 

But to save from what ? From perishing^ Jesus 
says. He was sent of God that men " should not 
perish. " Twice, in these few words, He gives 
this thought a solemn emphasis. And over against 



CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINTITNESS. 101 

perishing He places salvation, and in each case 
He calls the salvation " everlasting life. " What 
must the perishing be but everlasting death ? This 
is what the salvation is from. Not from misfortune, 
so much, nor from trouble, nor from ignorance, nor 
from degradation; all these, but infinitely more, 
from endless death and sin. From the death, the 
sting of which is sin, and from the sin, the wages 
of which is death. 

Never mind, now, microscopic investigation in 
philology to determine the exact shade of meaning 
of two or three Greek words. That has its place 
and worth. But take the trend of these gospels. 
Listen to the sad music of these tender, solemn, in- 
expressibly sad words. They fell from the lips of 
Christ alone. I quote no other. And not a scholar 
with any claim to competency challenges one of 
them as an interpolation. " Except a man be born 
again he cannot see the kingdom of God. " "I never 
knew you ; depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity." 
" Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire." 
" As, therefore, the tares are gathered and burned 
in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. " 
" And these shall go away into everlasting punish- 
ment." " For I say unto you that none of these 
which were bidden shall taste of My supper." "The 
door was shut." Do you not see the terrible irre- 



102 CHEISTIANITT A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 

versibleness and dread finality of all this? Surely 
Christ is a power unto salvation from endless death. 

3. But what is the ground or way of salvation? 
Where does the gospel record put the power of 
Christ to save ? Again it is Himself who tells us, 
"As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, 
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." After- 
ward He said : " My flesh will I give for the life 
of the world." " I am the good shepherd. ,* * * 
The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep." 
" The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, 
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
many." And when the eventful hour approached, 
He said, "Now is my soul troubled. Now is the 
crisis of this world. Except a com of wheat fall 
into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it 
die, it bringeth forth much fruit. . . . And I, if 
I be lifted up from the earth," — if I die — die on the 
cross — " will draw all men unto me." 

Here, then, from the lips of Christ Himself, is 
the doctrine that He came to save men by dying 
for them ; that the hour of His death on the cross 
v^as the crisis hour of this world — the pivotal point 
in the history of the human race. He nowhere in- 
timates that His power to save lies in the wisdom 
of His instruction. He nowhere intimates that His 
power to save lies in His blameless example. He 



CHEISTIANITr A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 103 

lived a holy life indeed — the one model of all time. 
He gave divine instruction, indeed — out of His 
mouth flowed gracious and wondrous speech. But 
this is not Christianity's inner and essential sub- 
stance. It drops out the vital truth of the atoning 
efficacy and attractive power of Christ's cross. 
There Jesus put His saving power. " The Son of 
Man must be lifted up, that" — to the end that, in or- 
der that — "whosoever believeth in Him should not 
perish." He who preaches Christianity, therefore, 
must preach an atoning sacrifice — Christ, not only, 
but Christ crucified. Fulsome laudation of the 
character and life of Jesus will not answer. Yield- 
ing Him admiration and tears will not do. The 
recognition of Him as a divine incarnation, leaves 
still a mutilated gospel. The men that come to 
Him saying, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a 
teaclier come from God ; for no man can do these 
miracles that thou doest except God be with him," 
are not the men that have yielded yet the homage 
and the belief that are vital. Christ crucified — He 
alone is the power of God unto salvation. Chris- 
tianity's central fact is Calvary's cross. Hence the 
apostolic emphasis put upon this idea. Those first 
preachers of Jesus, how they gloried in the cross ! 
How they set forth Jesus crucified, and lifted to the 
sight of men the Lamb of God, as a sacrifice and a 



104 CHRISTIAXriT A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 

propitiation for sin J How they dwelt upon the 
death of their Lord as the necessity of the world, 
and as alike the foundation and the hope of salva- 
tion ! How they boldly cast their all for time and 
eternity upon the redeeming and cleansing power 
of Christ's blood ! Place their preaching along-side 
this modern preaching of a gospel of indefiniteness, 
and see if it is not " another gospel." Put the two 
side by side — the one as found in the pages of the 
New Testament, and the other as found in the 
pages of the morning paper. Read through the 
lines, or between the lines, or behind the lines, and 
see what a great gulf is between the gospel of in- 
definiteness and the gospel of the scriptures; not 
simply as to style — that we might expect ; not sim- 
ply as to methods of illustration — that we might 
expect ; but as to the blood of the atone7nent ! Tell 
me, he who blots out that blood, or ignores it, in 
his ministry, in his belief, in his life, what is there 
left to blot his sins out? Does he preach, does he 
believe, does he live Christianity ? He who tears 
down the cross, what is there left to lift him to 
heaven? He who drops this vital, essential fact 
out of Christianity, and makes the cross of Christ 
of none effect, is recreant to Christianity. He per- 
verts and falsifies the truth as it is in Jesus. He 
may call himself a Christian, but in the specific, 



CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 105 

gospel sense he is anything else. He is sailing under 
false colors. He may wear the name, but of him the 
Lord, whose vicarious sacrifice he rejects, will say 
at last, " I never knew you." The church claim- 
ing to be a Christian church, is false to the title, if 
she make the cross of Christ of none effect. 

Whatever else men may teach, therefore, and 
whatever else they may believe, if they do not 
teach and if they do not believe Christ as a power 
of God unto salvation by atoning sacrifice, they do 
not teach and believe Christianity. This, according 
to the express words of Christ, as we have shown, 
this is Christianity — its central, essential, fundamen- 
tal truth. This, of all else, was preached boldly, 
constantly, eloquently, and with prodigious power 
by the immediate disciples of Christ, as their wri- 
tings and as historical records show. They deter- 
mined not to know anything among men save Je- 
sus Christ and Him crucified. God forbid, said the 
chief apostle, that I should glory save in the cross 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. This was the secret of 
their success, and it has been the potent truth of 
Christ's gospel ever since; the Lamb of God slain 
for the propitiation of sin ; the blood of Jesus shed 
for the cleansing of all guilty and sin-stained 
hearts; Christ crucified the power of God unto 
salvation. Wherever this has been expunged from 
•14 



106 nTTRTSTTA-NTTT A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 

the creed and the life, there has been no aggressive 
force, no regenerative and transforming pov^^er, no 
vs^inning of men from the ways of sin to a life with 
God. 

Hear, now, the confession of so-called liberal 
Christianity, made with refreshing frankness and 
boldness by one of its chief organs. " Liberal 
Christianity," it says, "makes no headway among 
coarse, uneducated, and unthinking people. Its 
necessary condition of success is a public possessing 
something beyond the average amount of culture, 
intellectually and morally." Upon its own con- 
fession, therefore, for the vast majority of mankind, 
this liberal Christianity is utterly unfit. Can it be, 
then, that this is the gospel Christ commanded his 
disciples to go into all the world and preach to ev- 
ery creature? Is this the Christianity that the com- 
mon people heard gladly in Christ's time, that even 
reached publicans and harlots, and lifted them to a 
life of purity and piety, divine and beautiful ? Is it 
Christianity at all? Is it not rather a libel on this 
free and glorious gospel of Jesus, adapted to man 
as he is everywhere, reaching down to the lowest 
and vilest, and capable of lifting them up to divine 
heights of grace and glory? Call it what you will, 
but do not call this thing of boasted culture, de- 
signed only for the elevated and intellectual few — 



CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 107 

do not call this Christianity. That is giving it the 
stolen livery of the very Christ whose work it per- 
sistently ignores and denies. Nor call anything 
else Christianity that does not hold fast to this car- 
dinal truth: Christ, the divine-human, God mani- 
fest in the flesh, a power unto salvation by atoning, 
expiatory sacrifice. 

4. But who are the subjects of this salvation ? 
" Every one that believeth." Jesus is a power un- 
to salvation through faith alone. It is Jesus Christ 
Himself who repeats again and again with most 
explicit and unmistakable definiteness this gospel 
truth. Twice, in the brief compass of the sentence 
we are taking to pieces, it is distinctly affirmed 
that God gave His Son that " whosoever be- 
lieveth in Him should not perish." A little 
farther on Jesus says, "He that believeth not is 
condemned already, because he hath not be- 
lieved." He said again, "he that believeth on me 
shall never thirst." And again, " This is the will 
of Him that sent me, that every one who seeth 
the Son and believeth on him may have everlast- 
ing life." And again, " He that believeth in me, 
though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he 
that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 
And again, " I am come, a light in the world, that 
whosoever believeth on Me should not abide in 
darkness." 



108 CHEISTIAiSJTrT A GOSPEL 0¥ DEITNITKNESS. 

Is it any wonder the apostles got from all this 
the doctrine of "justification by faith?" Had Jesus 
not prayed for all that should believe on Him 
through the word of those very apostles? One 
does not feel at all surprised to find those early 
apostolic preachers of Christ asserting, as they 
did, with ceaseless and questionless fidelity, that 
without faith it is impossible to please God ! Nor 
is it strange that the great Christian world ever 
since has held faith to be the vital thing on man's 
part in the gospel scheme; the appropriating act 
of the soul by which Jesus is accepted and em- 
braced; the first in the order of the Christian 
graces; the hinge that turns the whole soul about; 
the trustful commitment of every interest for time 
and eternity to the Lamb of God, as the determin- 
ing condition of everlasting life. 

But recently it has been heralded with great 
blare of rhetorical trumpet and air of boastful con- 
fidence, that Matthew says nothing about faith. 

The sufficient reply to this is: First, that even if 
this were absolutely true, no scheme is to be judged 
by one of its parts alone. Christianity, in its full- 
ness and totality, is set forth in Christianity's book, 
not in a single chapter or section of it. Secondly, 
Matthew's words were written primarily for the 
Jews, to convince them that Jesus was the Messiah 



CHEISTIAl^ITT A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 109 

of Old Testament prophecy and promise, and to 
give them true views of the kingdom of God. The 
Jew^s did not need to have it insisted that they must 
believe in the Messiah when He came. They 
knew that. They were ready for that, or thought 
they were. What they did need was this — to be 
persuaded that Jesus w^as Himself the very Messi- 
ah predicted in their scriptures, and to be persua- 
ded that the Messiah's kingdom was to be spirit- 
ual, over minds and hearts, and not the gross, car- 
nal, material thing they were looking for. And 
the gospel by Matthew was designed to meet just 
this need. It exactly fits it all through. Third, 
though faith is not explicitly insisted on, it is fairly 
and fully and everywhere in Matthew most un- 
mistakably implied. Listen: "Whosoever shall 
confess me before men, him will I confess 
also before my Father which is in heaven." 
That confession involves faith. " But whosoever 
will deny me, him will I deny." That denial in- 
volves unbelief. " Come unto me and I will give 
you rest." Come how, except by believing in 
him? " If any man will come after me, let him de- 
ny himself and take up his cross and follow me." 
But how can one do that and not believe? "Go 
and sell all that thou hast and give to the poor and 
come and follow me." Could a man do that and 



110 CHKISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 

not believe utterly in him who bade him do it? 
" Go ye and teach all nations, baptizing them in 
the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost." What is baptism but a sign and 
seal of faith. And what a farce to be baptized in 
the name of the Son, if we are not to " believe in 
the Son?" 

But I need not further prick this bubble, blown 
out on the recent air and gilded with the hues of a 
brilliant but superficial rhetoric. You may count 
it quite certain, friends, that no confessed smatterer 
in critical exegesis has discovered, or is ever going 
to discover, a fatal objection to Christianity, where 
the ablest and most scholarly minds in the ranks of 
hostile criticism have searched in vain. 

Mind you, I have not sought to show the rea- 
sonableness of faith in the gospel scheme; but that 
this very definite thing, salvation by faith, is indis- 
putably in the gospel, and essential to what we call 
Christianity. Faith's place, and necessity, and 
reasonableness could easily be vindicated. Men 
stumble over it, and cavil at it, and have their 
sneers about it. But tell me if in every important 
relation of life it is not vital. 

Distrust in the home makes a hell of it. Dis- 
trust in business makes a wreck of it. Distrust in 
government makes a mob of it. Distrust in God 



CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. Ill 

makes a liar of Him. How can God possibly save 
us while we practically say to His face, "I don't 
believe you," i. e. save us in the gospel sense, by 
taking us into His heaven, admitting us to His 
confidence, privileging us with His fellowship, per- 
mitting us to lean upon his bosom ? 

Now-, object as men may to these truths and 
doctrines, it cannot be gain-said that they constitute 
Chr stianity. Say what they will about this 
scheme of salvation, there can be no denying it is 
the gospel scheme. And it contains some very 
definite things— about God, about Christ, His per- 
son, His work, what He came for, God manifest 
in the flesh,to seek and to save that which was lost — 
to save from perishing:; to save to everlasting life 
out of an everlasting death; to save by the blood 
of His cross, by His dying for us; and to save 
through faith. These things are definite. These 
things we know. These things are Christianity. 
yesus Christy the divine-human^ Son of Man and 
Son of God^ God manifest in the -^esh^ the power 
unto salvation from sin and endless death^ by 
atoning expiatory sacrifice throitgh faith. 

If these things are truly embraced, out of them 
will inevitably coaie a life — a life that will be a 
constant struggle after the Christ-like; a ceaseless 
and prayerful effort by the grace of God to attain 



112 CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITEISTESS. 

unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ, 
If such life do not follow, the hope of salvation 
through Jesus Christ isn't worth a moment's cher- 
ishing. This we preach. For this, too, is Christi- 
anity. This defines and characterizes the faith. 
Faith without works is dead — the faith of devils, 
who believe and tremble. Faith that comes to 
blossom and fruit in Christ-like life, is of God. 
The life will be imperfect beyond a doubt. Chris- 
tianity has never yet been lived perfectly on earth, 
except as Christianity's Christ may be said to have 
lived it. But men, millions of them, have tried to 
live it. Christianity has other and subordinate 
doctrines. And about these, men — good men, 
Christ-loving men — may differ. But they cannot 
differ about the great fundamxcntal corner-stone 
truth of the gospel of God which I have named, 
and be Christians. They may be moral men, vir- 
tuous men, philanthropic men, men whose out- 
ward lives are more praiseworthy and lovable 
and unblamable than many who profess belief in 
the great truths of the Christian religion; but they 
are not Christians. Nor are all Christians who are 
enrolled on church registers. There are hypo- 
crites in the church. There are persons self-de- 
ceived in the church. Christianity is not to be 
judged by these. Christianity is to be judged by 



CHRISTIANITY A GOSPEL OF DEFINITENESS. 113 

those who believe in Jesus as their personal divine 
Savior, and who try to hnitate Him. The church 
that preaches this and seeks in all her life to live it, 
that is the Christian church. There is sad and 
pressing need for such preaching. Over all our 
land men, claiming to be Christ's heralds are 
preaching a mutilated, enervated, emasculated, 
forceless gospel. They are shading away its great, 
clear, sharply-defined truths, and making out of 
this glorious gospel of the blesssed God a gospel 
of impotence. O, let us understand that the power 
of Christianity lies not in a hazy indefiniteness, 
not in shadowy forms, not so much even in defi- 
nite truths and doctrines ; but in the truth and the 
doctrine. There is but one, Christ crucified. All 
the gathered might of the infinite God is in that 
word. 



15 



V. 

CHRISTIANITY'S VIEW OF MAN. 



This is the state of man : to-daj he puts forth 
The tender leaves of hope, to-morrow blossoms 
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him ; 
The third day comes a trost — a killing frost. 

— Shakspearb. 

Thou pendulum betwixt a smile and tear. — Byron. 

The glory and scandal of the universe. — Pascal. 

What is man that thou art mindful of him? 

— The Psalmist. 



CHRISTIANITY'S VIEW OF MAN. 



Who am I? Whence came I? Whither am I 
going? What is my being and character and des- 
tiny ? What is man ? These are questions asked 
in all ages. They are of unspeakable importance. 
To think seriously of what we are, may go far to 
make us think seriously and rightly of some other 
things, and to determine what we ought to do in 
view of them. 

Christianity has a definite answer to this ques- 
tion, What is man? But before considering 
Christianity's view, let us see what man is, in the 
light of the facts of history and consciousness. If, 
then, the word of Scripture be found to answer to the 
facts — if it match all round and not only fit into the 
facts, but explain them and account for them, 
making dark things luminous and seeming contra- 
dictions easy of reconcilation, we shall have another 
buttress flung across in air to support our gospel 
temple walls. And if, moreover, we thus find a 
117 



118 



wonderful adjustment of part to part in the great 
gospel scheme, equation after equation, an infinite 
need equaled by an infinite remedy, an immortal 
ruin met by a divine Restorer, a power of endless 
death answered to by a power of endless life, the 
readier we shall be to take up the song of the 
heavenly harpers and sing, "Great and marvelous 
are Thy works. Lord God Almighty! just and 
true are Thy ways, O King of saints!" 

Let us see, therefore, what man is in the light of 
nature. 

The facts of consciousness and history disclose a 
triple endowment of intellect, will, and affections. 

Man thinks, reasons, is capable of logical pro- 
cesses. Some of the lower animals appear to rea- 
son, but they never get very far in their lessons. 
The bee and the beaver build with seeming fore- 
thought and skill, in beautiful proportion and sym- 
metry, but they build no better to-day than when 
honey was first sucked from the flowers, and trees 
were first felled by these native forest-choppers. 
But man argues, establishes premises, passes from 
premises to conclusions, makes premises of these, 
and goes logically down, step by step, to other con- 
clusions, and acts upon them constantly and without 
fear. His intellect grows, too; has capacity for 
expansion ; arbitrates upon the several reports of 



119 



the senses; grasps, retains, accumulates, making 
past gains fruitful of gains still beyond and more 
precious. 

Again, man chooses, wills, has a voluntary na- 
ture. He is subject to motives, weighs them, acts 
upon them. His external conduct may be compelled. 
His will cannot be. In the realm of choice his 
reign is absolute. Outward force may stop the 
purposed deed or indulgence, but the choice of the 
soul cannot be taken away, and against all opposi- 
tion man may will on forever. 

Still again, man has an emotional nature, is en- 
dowed with affections and passions. These are the 
springs and sources of his activity, the spur to the 
will. Sometimes, indeed, the will may push in lines 
of intense activity at the behest of the moral judg- 
ment, against a perfect clamor of the passions; but 
ordinarily the loves, joys, desires, hopes, and their 
like, are the stirrers to toil. Man loves and hates, 
desires and dreads, hopes and fears, by the very 
necessity of his being. 

Embraced in this triple endowment of intellect, 
will, and affections, is a moral sense — a sense of 
oughtness and ought-not-ness — conscience. It is 
not so much an independent faculty as the entire 
inner spiritual being of man, acting in the realm of 
morals. It fixes obligation. It discriminates as to 



120 



right and wrong. It impels or restrains. It pun- 
ishes or rewards. It arises out of intelligence and 
voluntariness and the afFectional nature, and condi- 
tions all responsibility. 

This is man, as he is reported by consciousness — 
as he is seen in nature. This is that personal, con- 
scious, inescapable I, which every living being 
knows of. I think, I will, I love. Something be- 
sides my body it is, that thinks and wills and loves. 
My body does not do these things. My body is 
not I. 

Now let us go back and consider, first, the su- 
perb achievements of man's intellect. What great 
thoughts have been piled up through the centuries! 
What proofs they furnish of almost limitless power! 
" The great and wide sea" has been spoiled of its 
secrets, and its still, deep chambers are now made 
the passage-way of man's lightning-winged 
thought. The rock-ribbed continents have been 
compelled to tell the story of creation. Invisible 
scales have been flung out into space, and suspen- 
ded there upon nothing, have weighed worlds. 
Listening intelligence has caught the notes of some 
unknown music amidst the heavenly harmonies, 
and pointing unerring finger in a certain direc- 
tion into the depths of space, has said, " There 
some undiscovered planet is praising God;" and 



121 



the telescopic eye of science, turning thitherward 
at the bidden hour, has discovered the stranger. 

And wide as is the domain of knowledge, the 
area is being constantly enlarged. The out-posts 
of intelligence are being pushed farther each day, 
and the radius of human thought strikes each day 
a grander circumference. There is no known limit 
to the sweep of man's understanding. 

Consider, secondly, the superb capabilities of 
man's will. No earthly force has ever yet been 
able to harness it to a beaten track of endeavor. 
It has never cared against what odds it battled. 
And it has won such triumphs that human resolu- 
tion, in a burst of enthusiasm, has been pronounced 
omnipotent. Will to achieve or die; will to hold 
the mind to its task, even when the accomplish- 
ment of the task may be at the loss of reason; will 
to bear and smile when to bear at all is worse than 
death; will to force from hostile circumstances 
contributions to the will's influence and power; 
will to transform mountains into plains when 
they stand in the way of desire — this is the will of 
man. "There shall be no Alps "said Napoleon. 
And it was as if those cragged heights melted 
away before his imperial endeavor, so easily did 
he climb them at last by the famed roads he built. 

Consider, now, thirdly, the sweep and power of 

I5 



122 Christianity's view of man. 

man's affections or passions. How love has pos- 
sessed him, bowing his whole being, flaming out 
in heroic achievement and deeds of valor — in patient, 
unwearied, yea, joyful sufferance and martyrdom. 
How man has pitied, too, giving to mortals an al- 
most infinite tenderness. And so divine has been 
the transformation in some of these ministering 
angels of mercy, that their very shadows have 
been kissed as gifts of God. What transformations 
hope has wrought, clothing poverty with purple, 
and making " palaces beautiful" of loathsome dun- 
geons. What desires, also, are in man, forever 
beyond achievement. No heights have been high 
enough for his aspirations. Yearnings for knowl- 
edge, yearnings for light, yearnings for life and 
power, yearnings to be other than he is, as if there 
were some secret possibilities of his nature yet un- 
locked — how these have been mocked and baffled 
by poor accomplishment. 

Such is man in his higher nature. Lodged in 
this physical framework are all these limitless ca- 
pabilities of intellect, will, and affections. They 
crown man with glory and honor. They betoken 
a grand nature. They betray a grand origin. 

But is the story all told when this is told? Is this 
the full answer to the question, What is man.'' By 
no means. Meanness and shame, as well as digni- 



123 



ty and glory, attach to man. There are " gulfs of 
want" in his soul; rents and chasms and weak- 
nesses and violences, justifying Pascal's portrait- 
ure: "A subject of contradiction " is man, "a con- 
fused chaos," " the great depository and guardian 
of truth, and yet a mere huddle of uncertainty" — 
" the glory and scandal of the universe!" 

Let us go back over our ground once more, and 
see if this be not so. Take, first, man's intellect. 
While abating not one whit the splendor of this 
endowment, think of the insane follies upon which 
men have been bent, the strange and senseless the- 
ories that have been hugged and defended, the mon- 
strous absurdities that have had endorsement, to 
the disgrace of reason. In what contradictions the 
famed intellects of the world have involved them- 
selves. That contradictions may be true; that there 
is no such thing as matter; that there is no such 
thing as mind ; that God is the universe, of which 
you and I, and the leaf on the highway, and the 
worm trodden under foot, are perishable bits ; that 
there is no God — men have said all this. In the 
pride of their reason they have said it, and the very 
understandings producing such births have some- 
times been those gifted the most and reaching 
farthest. When the Egyptians were the famed 
masters of all learning, they worshipped an ox, dei- 



124 



fied a cat, and adored to idolatry leeks and garlic. 
And over all the world for thousands of years men 
have repeated the stupidity and folly recorded in 
Isaiahy of those who hewed down a tree in the 
wood, and with one part of it made a fire, and with 
the residue thereof made a God. " As if," says 
South, "there was more divinity in one end of the 
stick than in the other." So Bacon has been called 
" the greatest, wisest, meanest of mankind." So 
the myriad-minded dramatist and poet was never- 
theless an obscure and profane stage manager. So 
Napoleon, whose capacious head carried such 
trains of affairs, could listen at key -holes, and argue 
that he was beyond the possibility of crime because 
the child of destiny. Such are the shameful per- 
versions and anomalies of reason along-side of its 
proofs of glory and power. 

Think, too, of the spells and resurrections 
wrought by the imagination. Yet, what shame is 
linked with the glory of this faculty ! What hid- 
eousness and deformity are in this realm of the 
beautiful. What contrast of angel-life and demon- 
life. What riot of evil in the chambers where 
man's holiest and heavenliest conceptions have had 
birth. 

Pass now to man's will — the power of choice 
and purpose, lifting him out of the realm of mechan- 



125 



ism and instinct and making him the conscious and 
independent arbiter of his own destiny. And, alas! 
This high endowment is also his shame. Man, in 
the exercise of his sovereign choice, has willed to 
do wrong; and he has committed himself with a 
kind of imperial awfulness to evil endeavor. His 
will-force has carried him across continents and 
through the ruins of states and kingdoms — counting 
men only as wretches to be hired and killed in the 
furtherance of his daring and determined purpose. 
And he has willed on, man has everywhere, 
against conviction and against conscience, against 
even the deepest longings of his soul— with unsat- 
isfactoriness and unrest, with want and woe and 
weariness, he has willed on and willed to die so, 
rather than to yield his will to the will that makes 
for righteousness. 

Turning to man's affections, scandal and shame 
here also hang out their signals. These endow- 
ments might well be deemed the bond and cement 
of the race; but what jars, repugnances, transports 
of malice, violences of revenge, frenzies of remorse, 
swoops of unhallowed passion are here, often carry- 
ing the soul against will, against intellect, against 
conscience. Love is frequently only a more clean- 
ly name for lust. Desires in man press and plunge 
him to depths of infamy as well as incite him to 



126 



heights of glory. Hate, the very opposite of love, 
gleams out of men's eyes. Anger flushes and 
flashes in men's faces, and spends its swift bolt, oh! 
how often, in deeds of murder. Avarice binds 
man to his coffers with a self-denial that would be 
sublime in behalf of truth. This is the crazy mix- 
ture of the passions. 

And amidst all this, what of the moral sense? 
Well, here too is dread perversion, and perhaps the 
darkest shame. Conscience is seared. The black- 
est crimes of history get endorsement. In good 
conscience mothers kill their sweet babes. In good 
conscience men ply the rack. In good conscience 
men stamp out the holiest instincts of the heart. 
Man is made a conscientious fiend. 

Let me name one thing more that nature sug- 
gests, but does not assert, in answer to the question, 
What is man? That he is immortal, that somehow 
death does not end all. Nature gives no proof- 
no positive and absolute proof. But there are 
hints, suggestions, inferences, instincts, analogies, 
probabilities, that bring us almost to the very door 
of certainty. 

The expectation of something beyond is in all 
breasts. And there must be something there — an 
unseen orb — to so draw all human souls. So men 
guessed in the dim past. So they looked out half 



127 



blindly into the future, ages ago, and vaguely be- 
lieved. So they indefinitely reasoned at Athens. 
So the soul's immateriality, and the soul's long- 
ings, and the soul's capabilities would seem to in- 
dicate. By these are intimated possibilities of de- 
velopment there is no room for in this earthly life. 
And they seem to lift the frail and perishable crea- 
tures of a day out of the grasp of dissolution, and to 
say with a mighty confidence, " Ye are, and can 
not die." Shall he who has penetrated the arcana 
of all nature, who has harnessed the lightnings, las- 
soed unseen planets, traced the track of invisible 
comets, conquered earth, and sea, and air, and made 
everything in them tributary to himself, shall he 
who has found nothing yet in this earthly existence 
that meets and fills the broad expanse of his de- 
sires, who comes to death's door with unsatisfied 
longings just as eager and mighty as those experi- 
enced anywhere this side death — shall he die as the 
brute dieth, and be buried with the burial of an 
ass? 

Well, it can not be denied that these voices of 
nature give us hints, presumptions, tremendous 
probabilities in favor of a life beyond death as 
against the blank of everlasting silence. Hence 
man has everywhere believed, in all ages, and al- 
most without exception, that man is immortal. 



128 



And yet here, too, what a contradiction he is! He 
wishes for a future life, and yet dreads it. All the 
currents of his being set full and deep against anni- 
hilation; he shrinks from it with a positive and al- 
most unconquerable aversion, and yet would wel- 
come annihilation rather than he forever as his 
haunting fears tell him he may be. 

Such is man as nature shows him — a being of 
splendid powers — a being of contemptible powers 
— a being probably immortal — greatness, littleness, 
presumable everlastingness. 

"How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, 
How complicate, how wonderful,. . . . 
Dim miniature of greatness absolute ! 
An heir of glory ! A frail child of dust! 
Helpless immortal ! Insect infinite 1 
A worm! A God!" 

Now, does Christianity's answer to the question, 
"What is man?" match this, all round? Does it fit 
into these strange facts of history and conscious- 
ness? 

I make bold to say it not only fits all the facts, 
but explains them, accounts for them, disposes of 
the seeming contradictions, solves the otherwise 
insoluble riddle, and pours a flood of light on man's 
dark and difficult case. 

Christianity says, first of all, " God created man 



129 

in His own image — in the image of God created 
He him." 

He was not made a thing, therefore, but a spirit 
— for God is a spirit. He was made a h'ving in- 
telligence, answering to the natural image of God. 
He stood Godlike amidst the finger-works of the 
Almighty, breath of divinity, a splendid creature, 
a living soul. He could know his Maker and talk 
with Him, for he was made after His image. He 
could think and choose and will and love, for God 
could do these, and he was Godlike. Between his 
heart and God's heart there was not a veil of film- 
iest gauze. Lovingly and holily they fellow- 
shiped. There were no shifts, no violences, no 
disabilities. Love flamed up in fervors of devotion. 
Desire grew and was met as it grew in the won- 
ders and glories of that divine communion. The 
will pushed out in right lines of activity, and to all 
heavenly behest was obedient and correspondent, 
while no thought was man's that God could not 
share. 

Here is the source of those limitless capabilities 
of intellect, will and affections, which, we have 
seen, are possessed by man, and which crown him 
with glory and honor. The gifted creature is ac- 
counted for. No wonder he can think such 
thoughts; no wonder he is capable of such achieve- 

17 



130 OHRISTIAinTY'S VIEW OF MAN. 

merits; no wonder he is moved by such affections. 
He was made of God, in God's own image. This 
is Christianity's view of man, as he stood in his 
original estate — grandly endowed, a splendid being, 
divinely imaged, the consummate flower of creation. 
But Christianity's further account of man is this: 
That he is a sinner — that he was tempted away 
from those original heights of communion and glory; 
that he broke from divine allegiance, and struck 
a blow at his own Creator. God had made him 
with the power of choice, and he chose to do wrong. 
God had made him with a will, and he refused to 
yield the leadership of his will to the will of God. 
He changed the glory of the uncorruptible God 
into an image made like to corruptible man, and he 
changed the truth of God into a lie, and he 
worshiped and served the creature more than the 
creator. He thus marred and defaced the moral 
image in which he was made. But he retained the 
natural image. He carried all his grand capacities 
with him in his fall — capacities of thought, and 
purpose, and passion. Man is intelligence and ac- 
tivity and affection still, as God is. But he is a 
spirit perverted — a will athwart God's will— an ac- 
tivity busy with sin, with all the dynamics of his 
original birthright put to the earning of sin's 
wages — a heart deceitful above all things, that no 
longer loves God, and desperately wicked. 



Christianity's view of man. 131 

Christianity holds, moreover, that this curse of 
sin has struck through man's whole nature, and left 
its unclean touch everywhere. Through and 
through all the realm of thought and feeling, in 
the domain of reason and the chambers of imagery, 
where the will thunders and the heart throbs, there 
is not a spot left holy, there is not a trace of that 
image of " righteousness and true holiness " in 
which man was originally made. 

This is Christianity's view of man. And this 
matches the facts, and accounts for them. Man is 
a fallen principality — a being swung away from 
the glories of an original creation, but carrying 
with him all his deathless capabilities in his shame. 
Man is a ruin, but a ruin that betrays still the splen- 
dor of his past. Sin tells the story. M^an was 
made like God, and he was not satisfied. He would 
be God. So he fell from his high estate. There- 
fore, the anomalies, and perversities, and contradic- 
tions of his nature; therefore, this glory and this 
shame, this greatness and this littleness ; therefore, 
the exaltation and humiliation of reason ; therefore, 
the will's mightiness in wrong; therefore, the 
^' pendulum betwixt a smile and tear," the oscil- 
lating force between the deeps of degradation and 
the mountain tops of glory. 

One thing more. Christianity says man is im- 



132 



mortal. It comes with no guesses, analogies, prob- 
abilities. It comes with facts and living proofs. 
Outside of Christ there is nothing else concerning 
immortality but presumption. " But now is Christ 
risen from the dead." There once stood the eternal 
Son, in our body, on the way to die for us. And 
the great word on his lips was, " I am the resur- 
rection and the life." Go, stand now by that open 
grave. Hear the angel saying, " He is not here. 
He is risen." Listen to the apostles as they get the 
meaning of the wondrous fact. " Blessed be the 
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, ac- 
cording to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us 
again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of 
Jesus Christ from the dead!" We know now that 
death does not end all. 

" Man is immortal," is the clear, ringing word 
of scripture. Immortal and guilty. A sinner, 
with lost God-likeness, and to be forever. Put 
these things together, and don't you see how again 
they exactly match the facts? Don't you see how 
it is that man wishes for a future life, and yet 
dreads it; shrinks from annihilation, yet welcomes 
it; clings to life even when getting no joy from it; 
and wants to die, yet dare not? Christianicy's view 
of man accounts for these things. Nothing else 
does. 



133 



What is man? Christianity's answer is, Man is a 
ruin — a thinking ruin, the ruin of a divine image — 
the ruin of a deathless soul. He was made for God 
and made like God. But he is out with God. The 
harmony is broken. There is enmity between. 
There is discord in this realm. If God press His 
claims much, there is hate and open war. Mean- 
while, man is drawn to God — drawn yet repelled. 
" O that I knew where I might find Him ;" yet 
*'whither shall I flee from His presence." There is 
discord in the domain of conscience, in the realm 
of the passions, in the seat of the will. How the 
altars have smoked around the world as men have 
sought God. How the air has been thick with 
blasphemies as men have denied God. 

This great, awful, immortal ruin, who or what 
is to restore it? Philosophy cannot; for philos- 
ophy is born of the very ruin it would attempt to 
restore. So of every other device of human wis- 
dom. Shall man come to his own rescue? Will 
you, my friend, undertake your own restoration? 
Where will you find fulcrum for the lever of your 
uplifting force? Where will you find lever for 
your force? Ah, where will you find force? You, 
yourself, are the ruin. Shall the ruin restore itself ? 
Man is the ruin. Understanding, will, affections, 
body and soul, being and capacity of being, all are 



134: Christianity's view of man. 

smitten with the curse and ruin of sin. The woe 
is too deep for human specific. ImmortaHty can 
not be swallowed up of mortality. The sinner 
needs something for his recall and restoration more 
potent than anything in or of the sinner. What 
then? Must the ruin go on? Is there no eye to 
pity and no arm to save? Listen to these blessed 
words : " The Son of Man is come to seek and to 
save that which is lost." Who is this Son of Man? 
His name is called Wonderful, Counselor, the 
mighty God, Immanuel, God with us, God manifest 
in the flesh. 

Now what have we found that Christianity 
was — was and is? Jesus Christ, the divine-human, 
Son of Man and Son of God, God manifest in the 
flesh, a power unto salvation from sin and endless 
death by atoning sacrifice through faith. 

See, now, how the successive equations come out. 
Is the need infinite? So is the remedy. Is it the 
image of God that is so defaced ? Then it is a 
work worthy of God to restore the image. Did 
God make man? Then there is fitness in God's 
seeking to save. Was there divine wisdom in the 
fashioning? There is divine wisdom in the re- 
fashioning and redemption — wisdom bathed all 
over with an infinite tenderness. Is it the power 
of an endless death under which the ruin lies? 



135 



Jesus comes in the power of an endless life to seek 
and save. 

Do you not see how part answers to part? Such 
a being, so fallen, and immortal — does it not justify 
this august and tender mission of Jesus Christ? 
Must not both be true — the need and the remedy, 
the ruin and the restoration, the endless death and 
the endless life? Sinner, sinner, you are the ruin; 
yours is the need; it is you who are under the 
power of an endless death. The ruin can not re- 
store itself; there is no possible help for you, save 
through Jesus Christ; but if you will open the 
door of your heart and let Him in, yours will be 
the remedy and the restoration and the power of 
an endless life. 



VI. 
CHRISTIANITY NOT A FAILURE. 



I8 



Look back to the cross, and the disciples gazing on it in 
terror from afar, and then look around on the nations that 
are influenced by the faith which there centres — and note 
the change! Then take these elements, established in his- 
tory, and calculate the orbit Christianity is to fill. — Storrs. 

Jesus is the purest among the mighty, the mightiest 
among the pure, who, with his pierced hand, has raised up 
empires from their foundations, turned the stream of history 
from its old channel, and still continues to rule and guide 
the ages. — Richter. 

If this counsel or this work be of men it will come to 
naught; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it 

— Gamaliel. 

The more we are mowed down, the more we spring up 
again. The blood of the Christians is seed. — Tertullian. 



CHRISTIANITY NOT A FAILURE. 



Error is doomed. In the long run, it will go to 
the wall. The time comes for its exposure, and it 
is smitten to the death. This is the common judg- 
ment of the world. This is the verdict of history. 
What is of God must be permanent, if 'it be in the 
shape of truth. What claims to be of God and is 
not, but is born of human device, will ere long be 
unmasked and its falsehood revealed. Christianity 
appeared in- the person of its Founder over eigh- 
teen hundred years ago, and its great central truths 
had expression in the gracious words that proceeded 
out of His mouth. God was there, manifest in the 
flesh, a power unto salvation by atoning sacrifice. 
" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God," 
said Peter. " Upon this rock I will build my 
church," said Christ, " and the gates of hell shall 
not prevail against it." " There is none other name 
given under heaven among men whereby they can 
be saved." Heaven and earth shall pass away, but 
the word of the Son of the living God shall not 

pass away. 

139 



14:0 CHEISTIAIHTY NOT A FAILUEE. 

He, " being in the form of God, thought it not 
robbery to be equal with God, but made himself 
of no reputation and took upon him the form of a 
servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and 
being found in fashion as a man, he humbled him- 
self and became obedient unto death, even the death 
of the cross. Wherefore God hath highly exalted 
him, and given him a name which is above every 
name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should 
bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and 
things under the earth; and that every tongue 
should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the 
glory of God the Father." That time is coming. 
Then there shall be great voices in heaven, saying : 
" The kingdoms of this world are become the king- 
doms of our Lord and his Christ, and He shall 
reign for ever and ever." Thus is Christianity down 
on record. This is its proud and ambitious claim. 
It has entered upon the conquest of the world. 
And by its triumphs it means to vindicate the words 
of Gamalielj that it is of God and cann«)t be over- 
thrown. 

But men are calling it a failure. They say 
its work is virtually done, it is now a thing of the 
past — to be honored, indeed, for its instrumental 
agency in helping the race onward and upward, 
but outgrown and no longer serviceable. They 



CHKISTIANITT NOT A FAILUKE. 141 

patronizingly speak of its virtues, just as they 
would speak of the virtues of the Jewish code, or 
of the Koran of Mohammed, or of the Veda of the 
Hindoos. They put the Bible on the same ground 
with the books of other religions. They take it 
just as they take these, accepting or rejecting as the 
fancy suits them. They don't believe in devils, 
nor in the " monstrous prodigies " of the gospels, 
nor in " teasing God, as an unjust judge into com- 
pliance with vain repetitions," which is a way they 
have of representing the doctrine of importunity in 
prayer; but they do believe and they say, that the 
Christian belief that Jesus w^as the Son of God 
"stands in the way of the human race and hinders 
our march." 

This left handed way of complimenting the 
Christian religion clearly will not answer. This 
infidel stab at Christ is but another way of getting 
Him out of the world. Christianity is not some- 
thing that has served the world very well during a 
certain state of its progress, but is now to be super- 
seded. If it be that, all the eulogy in the world will 
not keep it from ranking as a failure and a fraud. 

But it is not a failure ? Were they dreamers of 
idle dreams who, in the time long: since, sounded 
out the lofty prophecies of universal peace by the 
conquests of Christ, when all hate should come 



142 CHEISTIAIHTT NOT A FAILURE. 

under love's supremacy, and war should be no 
more, and earth's angry noises should die in huslied 
stillness at the door of God's temple, builded at 
last for all the earth ? Are they apples of Sodom 
that God's prophets have held to the lips of hope ? 
Or is it still true that the Christ born of Mary is to 
be Prince of Peace at last, with the government 
on His shoulder and the uttermost parts of the earth 
for His possession? Let us see what Christianity 
has done, and what place it holds to-day, and what 
is the fair promise for the future. We shall thus 
have the best answer to these questions. 

You all know its origin, unquestioned now by 
the most intelligent and most hostile skepticism. 
Jesus Christ took twelve poor, illiterate men into 
His company, kept them a brief while under His 
instruction, went about with them, gained a few ad- 
herents to the new doctrine, commanded His disci- 
ples to go into all the world and make disciples of 
all nations, and then left them. With no equip- 
ment save the truth their Lord had given them, 
with no arms and no armies, no aid from the cabi- 
nets of princes, no learning, no wealth, no power 
of any kind, as men count power, providing neither 
gold nor silver nor brass in their purses, they went 
forth upon their strange undertaking. They told 
their story, they talked the word, they held up the 



CHEISTIANITY NOT A FAIL PEE. 143 

despised Nazarene, they said : " Believe and be 
saved; repent or perish. Idols are nothing; they 
are helpless to help you. Philosophy is vain. Your 
faith is not to stand in the wisdom of men, but in 
the power of God. We preach Christ crucified, 
to you Jews a stumbling-block, and to you Greeks 
foolishness, but nevertheless Christ, the power of 
God and the wisdom of God. " Religion, custom, 
law, policy, pride, interest, vice, philosophy, letters, 
all were united against them. 

The vast idolatry, embosomed in history, en- 
shrined in art, having its home in song, a thing of 
the fireside, this arrayed itself against Christianity. 
The prevailing religions were indeed regarded by 
philosophers as false, but the masses believed in 
them and the powers of the state sustained them, 
and the laws were adjusted to them and upheld 
them. " Keep yourselves from idols," was the 
charge of these feeble disciples, and the command 
that Christianity flung into the face of heathen- 
dom. It would not and could not accommodate 
itself to the reigning superstitions, nor allow any 
association with them. " Why may you not still 
adore that God of yours in conjunction with our 
gods?" said a prefect of Egypt to Dionysius. "We 
worship no other God," was the unyielding reply. 
Such language was unpardonable in the ears of an 



144 CHEISTIA2JITY NOT A FAILURE. 

idol worshiper. Yet Christianity held no other, 
built itself up only over the ruins of other systems, 
and ere long made all idols the outcasts of civiliza- 
tion. It sw^ept away the heathen worship which 
was imbedded in the national rites and usages, au- 
thorized by the government, sanctioned by a rich 
and varied literature, supported by all the allure- 
ment of art, associated with the greatness and glory 
of the state, and thus wrought into the very life of 
the people. 

The Jews, also, hated the new gospel, and ar- 
rayed themselves against it. They looked upon 
it as an apostasy from the religion of their fathers, a 
religion which was full of the tokens of Jehovah's 
presence and interlaced and interlocked with their 
most precious memories. 

The philosophers, too, scorned with an utter 
scorn the humiliating doctrines of the cross, whose 
heralds came not with the enticing words of man's 
wisdom. Priests and people of all classes spurned 
it as a religion without a temple and without an 
altar. The imperial state lit the fires of persecu- 
tion, loosed wild beasts, and flung the Christians 
as food to them, and tore assunder with the rack, 
to burn and kill out this hated thing, with its re- 
volutionary and disorganizing tendencies. 

Notwithstanding all this, Christianity spread, 



OHRlSTIANXr/ NOT A FAILUKE. 145 

multiplied its triumphs, without an army or a sword 
or a king, in poverty, in weakness as to numbers 
and learning, in spite of bigotry and violence, in 
spite of calumnies and persecutions, it moved stead- 
ily on, disrobing an established priesthood, over- 
throwing giant and defiant establishments, the 
growth of centuries, transforming pollution into 
purity and making multitudes of men great fearers 
of God, who yet had no fear of fire or famine or 
wild beasts. Martyrdom became their joy, and 
"the blood of the martyrs became the seed of the 
Church. " In the hottest of the conflict they never 
shrank, says Cyprian, but maintained their ground 
with a free confession, an unshaken mind, a divine 
courage, destitute indeed of external weapons, but 
armed with the shield of faith. In torments they 
stood stronger than their tormentors; their bruised 
and mangled limbs proved too hard for the instru- 
ments with which their flesh was racked and pulled 
from them, and the blows, however often repeated, 
could not conquer their impregnable faith. Thus 
they preached and lived and died, until the truth 
bhone everywhere, until Christ was known through- 
out Rome's vast empire, along all the borders of 
Spain, in the many countries of the Moors, in the 
different nations of Gaul, and even in those parts 
where the Romans did not reach; and at last 

19 



146 CHEISTLAJSITT NOT A FAILTJEE. 

Christianity was the prevailing doctrine, and the 
kingdom of Christ was everywhere extended, and 
Rome's emperor himself became a disciple of 
Jesus. 

I know it is said other religions, too, have spread, 
and found multitudes to embrace them. But they 
have not spread as Christianity, offering their con- 
verts nothing in the world but self-denial and sacri- 
fice, and abasing the pride, crucifying the lusts, 
quelling the passions, demanding an utter self-sur- 
render and a complete regeneration of the moral na- 
ture. The early Christians fought their way, fired 
by no passion save love, using no weapon save the 
word of God, sustained by no might save the might 
of faith, exhibiting no spirit save the patient for- 
giving spirit of Jesus. They subdued the world 
by dying for their religion. Surely Christianity was 
not a failure in the early centuries. And Gibbon's 
fifteenth chapter is an insult to intelligence. 

But how about the centuries that followed ? it is 
asked. What of Christianity in the so-called dark 
ages? Ah, it is true Christianity has been betrayed, 
corrupted, perverted from its high and holy ends 
and made to be the instrument of unutterable woes, 
even by its professed disciples. But even in these 
darkest and most adverse facts of Christian history, 
there is proof of the inherent and divine vitality of 



CHEISTIANITT NOT A FAILURE. 147 

the religion of Jesus, and rightly regarded they 
furnish no support whatever to the assumption that 
Christianity is a failure. 

Christianity had borne one test triumphantly. It 
had flung itself, as an infant of days, into conflict 
with an opposing world of idolatry. It had met the 
vigorous and combined assaults of Heathenism, Ju- 
daism, and imperial Rome, and had conquered. It 
had thus borne the test of the outward, and proved 
its power to cope with the ablest and wiliest exter- 
nal foes armed with every v;^eapon that could be 
gotten from the armory of human craft and human 
rage. Could it bear the test of an inward assault? 
Could it pass through the ordeal of its own corrup- 
tions? Could it prove itself charged with a divine 
power of self-restoration, when debased and per- 
verted by misbegotten opinions and unholy allian- 
ces and human errors? This was the question yet 
undecided. And the ages that followed these early 
triumphs settled it. 

Constantine, swaying the proudest imperial scep- 
tre, having become a believer in Christianity, must 
needs make it stronger by his regal patronage. 
He unites it to the state, allies it with the power of 
his imperial throne, lifts it to political place and 
prerogative, " which is the same as to say that he 
dooms it, for ages to come, to be the mother of all 



148 chrisitanity not a. failure. 

unholy arts and oppressions and the source of un- 
speakable miseries." Gregory the Great must 
have a consolidated church under the primacy of 
Peter, so that Christianity maybe more stately and 
conspicuous by the pomp of a robed official and 
the paraphernalia of imposing forms. Then comes 
a supervision of Christianity, a taking it in charge* 
an attempt to mend it and improve it, until the am- 
bitious supervisor of this heaven-born and divinely 
vitalized thing is inflated to a degree of pride that 
leads to the taking of God's own seat and the usurp- 
ing of God's own prerogatives and the dispensing 
of God's own pardons. Then follows the overlay- 
ing and stifling of the pure gospel " by a mass of 
anti-Christian inventions and corrupt traditions." 
Celibacy and monastic retirement are recommend- 
ed and rewarded, as the begetters of a higher spir- 
itual life, thus making the disciples of Christ infidel 
to God-ordained society, and generating corrup- 
tions almost too monstrous to be believed. Images 
and pictures are set up in consecrated places as 
sensible representatives of spiritual truth, and alas, 
idolatry comes back again, reappearing in the very 
bosom of the church. Mary is thrust to a promi- 
nence even above her Lord, and glorious Christi- 
anity is transformed into " a fantastic scheme of 
Mariolatry." Bargains are made for indulgences, 



OHRISTIANITY NOT A FAILUEE. 149 

works are substituted for faith, sins are forgiven at 
a price. 

Now can Christianity stand this unutterable and 
abominable perversion of her primitive purity of 
doctrine and life? Have these fearful corruptions 
and profligacies no power of death upon it? Can it 
exorcise the demoniac spirit of the hierarchy and 
throw off the subtle and monstrous errors there- 
•with? This has been done. Christianity has 
proved equal 'to the task of purifying itself. The 
Reformation vindicated the power of Christianity 
to antidote by its own inherent and divine vitality 
the poison of internal corruptions. Meanwhile it 
had been proved by the Crusades that propagation 
by the sword is forbidden of God. Meanwhile, too, 
Christianity had been settling and compacting its 
true faith into abstract formulas and logical creeds. 
It came forth from the dark ages, thoroughly 
equipped, exorcised of its evil possessions, with no 
weapon for its warfare but the truth, took possess- 
ion of the foremost nations, seized the printing- 
press just invented, and put it to publishing its glad 
tidings, crossed the sea to the new continent, and 
laid the foundation of its temples in the wilds of 
unbroken forests, and ever since it has been push- 
ing its conquests, extending its domain, multiplyinn- 
its victories, and scattering the leaves of the tree 



150 CFBISTIANITY NOT A FAILUEE. 

of life that are for the healing of the nations. It 
holds an influential place, and makes its power felt 
wherever learning, art, commerce, society, policy, 
and political dominion are the freest and the best. 
The leading civilizations of the earth to-day are 
Christian, not because their kings and emperors 
and presidents are Christians, nor because the name 
of God is in their constitutions, nor because their 
public documents recognize Christian obligations, 
and express Christian beliefs, but because the com- 
mon ideas and common beliefs and common ten- 
dencies and common consciences of these civiliza- 
tions are Christian. The industry and intelligence 
of the ruling races, from which have been born 
commerce and trade, have been spiritualized and 
rendered saintly and heroic by Christianity. The 
great commercial states of antiquity had no such in- 
ner, spiritual, uplifting force. But those of to-day 
are indebted to it far more than is commonly be- 
lieved. Ritter, in his "History of Philosophy," 
well says: "The great influence of Christianity 
would be less questioned if it had not penetrated so 
deeply and so widely into our being. We habitu- 
ally bear about with us much that is exclusively 
Christian ; which, however, having, as it were, be- 
come a second nature, is no longer looked upon as 
in any way an influence of Christianity, but is re- 



CHEISTIA1?ITT NOT A FAILURE. 151 

garded as an ordinary element of man's character." 
Our ideas concerning the treatment of idiots and 
the insane, the deaf and dumb, and blind, are born 
of Christianity. The very best men among the 
millions of ancient heathendom would have laughed 
at the suggestion of schools and asylums for the 
training and care of mutes and maniacs and inebri- 
ates. Christianity, too, has mitigated the horrors 
of war, broken the power of tyranny, elevated the 
masses, spread abroad what is the worthiest and 
best in our notion of liberty. 

Christianity has most near and vital relations to 
education, to literature and to civil freedom. 

To education. The Reformation was something 
more than a protest against the corruptions of the pa- 
pacy. \t was a plea for the right of private judg- 
ment. And for the intelligent exercise of that right 
there is a necessity for education. Hence, under 
the direction of Luther, schools sprang up all over 
Germany. Hence, wherever Christianity in its 
purified form spread, the cause of general educa- 
tion was given a wonderful impetus. Zeal for re- 
ligion, conspired with love of learning. Oxford 
and Cambridge and the celebrated schools and col- 
leges of Scotland were established and fostered by 
the friends of Christianity. Within thirty years 
after the landing of the pilgrims, they had laid the 



152 CHEISTIAinTY NOT A FAILTJEE. 

foundations of our entire educational system. Our 
own colleges, in large part, had a Christian 
foundation. Just as soon as our forefathers had 
provided comfortable homes for themselves, and 
selected convenient places for the worship of God, 
they sought to found institutions of learning for 
Christ and the church. Pro Christo et ecclesia^ is 
to this day the unchanged inotto of Harvard col- 
lege, though alas, its present spirit and life and in- 
fluence belie the words. Yale college originated 
in a sincere desire to uphold the Protestant relig- 
ion by securing a succession of learned and ortho- 
dox men. Princeton college was founded by the 
synod of New York. Dartmouth was established 
in the most elevated principles of Christian piety. 
Amherst college grew out of a charity-school; it 
was born of the prayers and baptized with the tears 
of holy men. So were scores of others throughout 
our land. State policy, state patronage, exclusive 
of religious influence, can not show a half-dozen 
flourishing colleges across the continent. Infideli- 
ty can not show one. 

So, too, with literature. Christianity has a lit- 
erature of its own, having given to the world some 
of its choicest treasures in this department. Cal- 
vin with the French, Luther with the German, 
Wycliffe with the Saxon, have done more than all 



CHEISTIANITT NOT A FAILURE. 153 

others to preserve the purity of their respective 
tongues. And thus the three chief living languages 
of the globe are indebted to Christianity for their 
best forms of speech. 

So, too, with liberty. Luther's ninety-five theses 
were so many blows at all institutional authority 
demanding blind assent and unreasoning obedi- 
ence. The right of private judgment is the foe of 
despotism, whether ecclesiastical or political. It 
swept men out into a larger and larger freedom. 
The gospel is a charter of liberty, equality, and 
fraternity. It is the greatest leveler the world 
knows. It opposes all caste. It took its place in 
mens' hearts, in the bosom of society, and it did its 
leavening work. It regenerated the laws and po- 
litical liberties of the English nation. Hume, who 
cannot be charged with favoring Christianity, says : 
" England owes whatever of civil liberty it enjoys 
to the influence of the Puritans." Christianity 
came to our shores, and here laid the foundations 
of that freedom which is to-day our glory and our 
pride. 

But these are only the minor relations of Chris- 
tianity — its secondary and subordinate effects. It 
is as a power unto salvation, changing men's minds, 
transforming their natures, purifying their hearts, 
that it claims to be sent of God. And here cer- 

20 



154 CHRISTIANITY NOT A FAILIJEE- 

tainly, it is no failure. It is doing to-day just what 
-it has always done, changing vice into virtue, pol- 
lution into purity, hate into love, revenge into for- 
giveness, lawlessness into obedience. There are 
personal exemplifications of its transforming power 
occurring all over our land and world. On the 
coasts of Africa those who once were slaves to lust 
now delight in purity — those who once hated 
and murdered each other now pray for their ene- 
mies. " By the grace of God," say these new-born 
souls, " we are what we are." It is not commerce, 
nor philosophy, nor letters, that is humanizing 
them, uplifting them, changing the savages into 
saints, and woman, a slave, a beast of burden, a 
victim of lust, into woman, the queen of a home 
hallowed and peaceful — it is the gospel of the blessed 
God. At the Hawaiian islands it has changed in a 
half century the character, habits, and moral life 
of a nation. The captain of the little brig Thad- 
deus, that bore the first missionary party there, had 
permission of the ship-owners to bring back the 
poor creatures when they should realize the folly 
of their enterprise. But it has well been said there 
was one on board the Thaddeus whose name was 
not down on the ship's register. Not with powder 
and ball and shot and shell, but with the living 
word of God did they go forth to conquer those 



CHRISTIANl'lT NOT A FAILURE. 155 

islands for Christ, and they conquered them. There 
they are to-day, morally and spiritually revolution- 
ized. The superstitions and degradations of 
heathenism, although the more debased and cor- 
rupted by contact with the civilized world, have 
been supplanted by the usages and institutions of a 
Christian nation. The thing that has done this — 
is it not of God ? And can it, with any regard to 
truth, be termed a failure? 

Mohammedanism, the religion of the false pro- 
phet, did indeed once enter upon a career of con- 
quest, and it lodged itself as a faith in the hearts of 
great peoples, but it did it " by the fierce apostleship 
of arms," by appeals to lust, by pandering to pas- 
sion. What there is really noble in it was borrowed 
or stolen from Christianity, and the rest is only 
a gratification of the natural selfishness of the 
human heart. Christianity's conquests are all 
peaceful; by the word, not by the sword; by love, 
not by power. But it makes no truce with human 
selfishness; extends no indulgences to sin. It de- 
mands the crucifixion of the old nature — a complete 
renunciation of every way of evil. It goes directly 
into conflict with sinful nature; and self-sacrifice is 
the very law of its life. 

Other religions flow with the current of man's 
nature, and if they have had a permanence and a 



156 CHEISTIANITT NOT A FAILURE. 

prevalence in the world, it is no wonder, even as it 
is no wonder that the waters of Niagara keep on 
over the rapids for thousands of years. Why not, 
with nothing to oppose them ? But Christianity 
breasts the current — goes upward steadily, making 
progress against that hell of disorder and disability 
begotten of sin in our world. " Christianity rises 
and raises its adherent races with it." False re- 
ligions die, as their adherent races die. Christianity, 
again, has already proved its power to subdue all 
races — every people and kindred, and tribe and 
tongue. It has universal adaptability. It sweeps, 
too, the scale of mind, triumphing everywhere, 
from the highest to the lowest, commanding the 
homage of the loftiest intellects, and yet furnishing 
food for those who are scarcely distinguishable from 
the mindless brute. Here Newton and Locke and 
hosts of others bowed and believed. Here Milton 
bathed his wings. And here many a little child 
and many an ignorant savage have entered into the 
joy of their Lord. 

The great founders and law-givers in the world 
of philosophy — where are their schools to-day? 
Plato, w^th his deeply-cultured soul, embodied his 
wisdom, his mighty and beautiful thought, in a book. 
But what has his " Phaedo " done for the world? 
An Emerson indeed says; "Burn your libraries, 



CHRISTIANITY NOT A FAILURE. 167 

for they are all in this book. Buddhism Is In It, 
Mohammedanism is in it, Christianity Is In it." 
But men do not burn their libraries. They know 
that Infidel cry Is rhapsodical nonsense. They do 
not read Plato much. But millions to-day study 
with deepest reverence the words of the unlettered 
mechanic. And the doctrine and life of Jesus are 
expounded and unfolded by the richest learning of 
the world. 

Yet there are men saying with an air of great ^ 
confidence that the days of Christianity are numb- 
ered. Only this last week I was addressed after 
this fashion : " It must be quite evident to you 
that evangelical Christianity is losing ground rap- 
idly. And I predict to you now that It will con- 
tinue to lose ground in an accelerated ratio from 
year to year." 

This, in view of the fact that far more homes than 
ever before In any year of our Lord have just cele- 
brated Christmas! This, in view of the fact that 
never before since Christ were so many millions 
week by week studying the gospels, with helps 
multiplied and perfected by the best learning of our 
time, old and young finding their profit and their 
joy In getting at the treasures of Bible truth! This, 
in view of the fact that modern Christian missions 
are the birth of this century, are scarcely fifty years 



158 CHRISTIANITY NOT A FAILTTEE. 

old, and yet are to-day being prosecuted with a 
vigor and learning, and hope, and mastery of the 
world's languages simply marvelous, encircling 
continents and piercing their pagan darkness, and 
preparing to cross and recross their wide moral 
wastes, and expecting to triumph everywhere in 
Christ Jesus. 

Christianity a failure! Then man is a failure. 
Then the race is a failure. Then the government 
of God is a failure. The man whose face is seamed 
and ridged all over with the fruits of vice says virtue 
.s a failure. The bloated, besotted, driveling in- 
ebriate says temperance is a failure. The highway- 
man and the murderer say law is a failure. The 
reckless violaters of the laws of health say the 
science of medicine is a failure. Pope Pius IX. 
said the civilization of the nineteenth century is a 
failure. The owl says light is a failure. Is it any 
wonder that men may be heard to say Christianity 
is a failure? It's an old cry. Every single century 
since Christ it has been sounded out. But some- 
how this thing we call Christianity does not fail. 
Meanwhile, of exploded scientific theories that had 
their brief day and then were snuffed out, what a 
long roll can be called. And the charge of Chris- 
tianity's failure never seemed quite so absurd as in 
the high noon of this nineteenth century. He only 



CHRISTIANITY NOT A FAILUKE. 159 

can make the charge who shuts his eyes to some 
tremendous facts, and who is smitten with the 
notion that his own little world of doubt and cavil 
is the whole wide world of thought and feeling of 
to-day. 

Let it be frankly confessed that Christian disci- 
pleship might be improved. Undoubtedly there are 
tares in the wheat. Beyond question if the fires of 
persecution were kindled again, as they were in the 
early centuries, there would be some professed 
fearers of God who would be found to be greater 
fearers of them that kill the body ; and the church 
of Christ would have some winnowing. There 
would be Luthers and Cranmers and Husses, Peters 
and Pauls and Stephens, a goodly and glorious 
company, without a doubt. But some, it is to be 
feared, would hide their light under a bushel, rather 
than make light by their quivering, burning flesh. 

Let it be confessed, also, that wider conquests 
might have been achieved for Christ; that better 
and richer results might have been, and ought to 
have been, produced by Christianity's net- work of 
missions. If we count men, the majority are still 
anti-Christian. But the foremost nations are nom- 
inally Christian. In all the leading civilizations 
there is no power like Christ, the power of 
God. No person on eprth, or that ever lived on 



l6o CHRISTIAiaTY NOT A FAILUKE. 

earth, is so much talked about, and written about, 
and thought about this very hour as Christianity's 
Christ. No volume of literature, nor any collec- 
tion of volumes, nor all literature combined, stimu- 
lates such thought, kindles such hopes this ver;) 
hour as Christianity's book. The mightiest cur- 
rents of feeling now flowing through the world 
have their source in the crucified Galilean. Chris- 
tianity, to-day, lights up the earth as the beautiful 
feet of morning upon the mountains, and the dark 
placfc^ of cruelty and barbarism are where its beams 
have not fallen. Wherever its banner is uplifted 
there are signs of progress. It is pushing its out- 
posts steadily farther and farther into the region 
and shadow of death. It hesitates not to grapple 
with the hoariest iniquities. It dares fling its forces 
into the very heart of heathendom. Forces! It 
has none, save its word, Christ crucified, and faith 
in that word. But these it thinks enough for the 
conquest of continents. And so it is constantly 
and everywhere aggressive. 

It rests content with no past achievement — is 
satisfied with no fresh victories, however glorious 
and mighty. It hangs out no signals of decay; 
exhibits no marks of growing impotency; abates 
neither hope nor heart. Men everywhere, of high 
Jegree and low degree, learned and ignorant, con- 



CHEISTIANITY NOT A FAILUBE. 161 

tinue to believe it, yield to it, bow at the foot of its 
uplifted cross. From the east and from the west, 
and from the north and from the south, they come, 
and the numbers increase as they come, to worship 
the Christ of God. The tokens of universal tri- 
umph grow brighter and brighter. Hail, millennial 
day ! Speed thy coming, oh, thou time of prophecy 
and promise. Come, Lord Jesus; come quickly. 

Meanwhile, if there be one thinking something 
like this, " Well, if Christianity be a success, if all 
things are possible with it, why am I not a Chris- 
tian ? Certainly, so far as I am concerned, it is a 
failure;" let me urge you to stop and think a little 
more deeply. What if the trouble be with you, and 
not with Christianity? Is the physician a failure, if 
you grow worse under his care, because you do not 
mind his directions ? Is the barometer a failure, be- 
cause the sailor does not mind its warnings? Is 
Christianity a failure, because the sinner freely and 
deliberately rejects its claims and its offered terms 
of mercy ? You see, there are two sides to this ques- 
tion. My friend, you may be a failure — an eternal 
failure. And the saddest of all failures is that of a 
soul, with its capabilities and possibilities, failing of 
life everlasting, and entering upon that night of 
death upon which morning never dawns. Oh, let 
Christ in, and give Him room in your worldly 

21 



162 CHEISTIAKITY NOT A FAILUKE. 

heart, so that He may be to you as He has been to 
so many miUions, neither a stumbhng-block, nor 
fooHshness, but the power of God and the wisdom 
of God. 



VII. 

CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 



( 

It had been good for that man if he had not been born. 

— Jesus Christ. 

Which waj I fly is hell. Myself am hell. 

— Satan, in Milton's Paradise Lost. 

We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot 
.answer all questions about them. — Jerermy Collier. 

And these shall go away into everlasting punishment 
—Jesus Christ. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 



There are two standard objections brought 
against Christianity. One is brought against its 
doctrine of forgiveness; the other against its doc. 
trine of punishment. Its doctrine of forgiveness is 
regarded as pushing forbearance to the Hmit of 
cowardice and pusillanimity. The doctrine of pun- 
ishment, as almost universally interpreted, is re- 
garded as niaking God harsh, hard, unjust, a tyrant. 
Men are thus too just for its mercy, and too merci- 
ful for its justice. When it comes to the treatment 
of their enemies its inculcations are altogether too 
lax, implying weakness and imbecility. When it 
comes to the treatment of God's enemies its threat- 
ening are altogether too severe, implying harshness 
and cruelty. 

The most natural reply to these objections is that 
they neutralize each other. If we are asked to for- 
give men as God forgives us, and we can not do it 
and will not do it; if we demand that repeated and 
fctinging and causeless provocation be punished, 

165 



166 CHRISTIANTl'T AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

with no love in our hearts for the wrong-doer and 
no willingness in our hearts to bless him, and no 
disposition in our hearts to overcome his evil with 
our good ; and God says there is all this in His 
heart toward all men, even though constant and 
flagrant and infamous in their treatment of Him — 
then what becomes of our assumption that we are 
more merciful than God because He declares that 
the wages of sin is death, and that He will by no 
means clear the finally guilty ? 

Another reply to this arraignment of God's justice 
is that it would be a poor principle in criminal ju- 
risprudence to allow the criminal to affix penalty 
to crime. Suppose thieves were allowed to make 
laws for theft! Would you let a common mur- 
derer, who cared no more for human life than for 
the life of a dog, determine the penalty for murder? 
What great guilt can a man see in spoiling virtue 
who has not one instinct of virtue? Well, is the 
violator of the law of God in any better condition 
to decide the penalty due that violation? Remem- 
ber, sin blinds; sin hardens; sin blunts the keen 
edge of moral sensibility; sin sears the conscience, 
perverts the judgment, biases the will. Shall the 
sinner, in love with sin, habituated to sin, frame a 
measure of his guilt out of his own consciousness ? 
Is he the one to fix the penalty of his own trans- 
gression ? 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 16T 

Still, again: What creature has climbed God's 
heights ? Who, but God himself, knows all the re 
lations and bearings of obedience to God ? Who is 
aware of the infinite and eternal interests that pos- 
sibly hang on the very law whose violation the 
sinner is guilty of every day and hour of his life? 
Who knows the reason and reach of that law, the 
tremendous concerns it guards, the necessities of its 
dread sanctions, that he can speak with such posi- 
tiveness of the injustice of its penalty. God's gov- 
ernment is one of law. Law without penalty 
makes government a farce. Penalty must be com- 
mensurate with the interes*:s involved. 

But it is said, no man would punish another for- 
ever, for the sins of a lifetimr. God will not. 
He is not hai'der and harsher thisn His creature. 
Letting men eternally perish is n&t what man 
would do, and hence the doctrine cannot be true of 
God. A man, though his past life has been bad^ 
who does a heroic deed and dies doing it, isn't go- 
ing to hell, scripture or no scripture. No loving- 
human heart would send him there. And surely 
not the loving heart of God. 

" Christ ain't a-going to be too hard 
On a man that died for men." 

There it is, as it crops out in the concluding lines 



168 CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

of one of John Hay's Pike county ballads. It is a 
prevalent sentiment. 

But who art thou, O man, that repliest against 
God? Hast thou the sweep of the universe, and 
knowest thou the reasons of the Almighty, that 
thou decidest what, in His infinite wisdom and 
love, God will and can do, and what He will not 
and can not? Are God's ways to be measured by 
man's? Well, then, look at Chicago before the 
great fire. What prodigious labor was here, what 
vast expenditure, what vital connection with ma- 
terial values the world over, what happy homes! 
And, then, how swift and utter the desolation. 
How the hot flames went leaping and dancing 
over the doomed city in demoniacal delight, laugh- 
ing at the tired firemen, flinging themselves after 
the panic-stricken crowd, as if in remorseless rage, 
scorching and consuming human flesh, making a 
hundred thousand homeless, and weighting many 
lives with a sorrow whose shadows fall yet. Re- 
call the acres of ashes and blackened ruins, the 
charred corpses, the hopelessness, the biHer, bitter 
tears, the anguish, anxieties, apprehensions, fears, 
disturbances, and actual sufferings that stretched 
from that fire around the world. Would you do 
that, or allow it? God did. Look et that gaunt 
crew on that storm-swept, dismantled vessel, 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 169 

thinned down so that a mother would scarce know 
her boy among the skeletons, dying by slow star- 
vation, and one of them scribbling in the last delir- 
ium of hunger on a bit of paper that he puts in a 
bottle but has not strength to cast into the sea: 
" Lord Jesus, guide this to some helper. Merciful 
God, don't let us perish," — and getting no answer. 
Would you do that, or allow it, if you had the 
management of the world? God does. Think of 
the pestilences, producing horrors on which imagi- 
nation dare not dwell ; think of the famines, where 
men and women and prattling babes die in pro- 
longed and frightful agony; think of the mean, 
base, dastardly men that place their heels of usurped 
and lawless power on the neck of innocence and 
virtue, while truth is dragged in the street and 
made to bite the dust amidst the derisive shouts 
and blasphemous orgies of the emissaries of the prince 
of the power of the air celebrating their hellish vic- 
tories! Would you allow this if the reins were in 
your hands? God does. Ah, no man knows 
what he would do if he were in God's place, and 
could see as God sees. 

Are we not forced to admit that God may have 
infinitely wise and satisfying reasons for what ap- 
pears harsh and hard in His works and word? 
We must either come to this, or come to charge 

22 



170 CHEISTIANITT AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

God openly with injustice, or come to atheism. 
Either the God of the Bible is the God of the uni- 
verse and good in both, or the God of the Bible is 
the God of the universe and bad in both, or there 
is no God at all. 

But men do not take easily to the absolute denial 
of God. There is something morally and mentally 
monstrous in atheism. Nor do they take easily to 
shaking their fists in the face of the Almighty and 
arraigning Him as a tyrant. So rather than get 
rid of God, and rather than defy God, they will go 
to God's truth to get the kind of God they want. 
Hence the challenge of the doctrine of eternal pun- 
ishment. Men do not wish it in the Scriptures. 
They look to see if it is really there. Most men 
find it there. Against all the instincts of the heart, 
against some of the deepest feelings by which man 
is moved, they find it nevertheless. Only the mer- 
est inconsiderable fragment of the Christian schol- 
arship of all the world in all ages has failed to find 
it. 

But a few have not read it in these Scriptures. 
Some, in the sympathy of their hearts, have not 
read it here. Some, with a superficial investiga- 
tion, have not read it here. Some, with a wild 
desire to get rid of its eternal sanction, have not 
read it here. Some have exhausted language in 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 171 

picturing the material awfulness of a literal lake of 
fire eternally blistering, and scorching, and consum- 
ing the lost, and then have shouted : " Away with 
this doctrine of eternal punishment." But the great 
body of humble Christian believers and the great 
body of profound Christian scholars hear what 
these men have to say in advocacy of " universal 
salvation," or " conditional immortality," or " eter- 
nal hope," and they go back to their Bibles, and 
still they read, even as before, the doctrine of eter- 
nal punishment. Tell me why. They do not want 
to read it so. Millions of as tender hearts as there 
are in this world find it in their Bibles. The vast 
majority of Christian scholars, age after age, search 
these Scriptures with the possibility before them of 
some other conclusion, and still they find it. Why? 
There is only one answer. They find it because 
it is there. They believe it because they must. 

And now, to clear the fog that has enveloped 
this doctrine in the lowlands of unbelief, to free it 
from the gross misrepresentations of hate and the 
erroneous inferences of ignorance, let me, as briefly 
as possible, state Christianity's true relation to the 
punishment of the other world. 

I. Christianity reveals the punishment. It 
does not make it. It is uncovered by Christianity, 
brought to light. Conscience tells men the world 



172 CHEISTIANITT AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

over that they are guilty, and that they will be 
punished for their guilt. Christianity simply 
makes this fact more clear, throws light on that 
future track of doom, sets forth the exact truth 
about the matter. The gospel does not coin the 
punishment or make the sinner. Men are sinners, 
and there the punishment is. Hell, therefore, has 
not been built by Christianity. There is a hell, 
Christianity or no Christianity. Does the head- 
light of the locomotive make the jaws of death into 
which the express train plunges because of some 
misplaced switch? The dread doom is there, and 
the headlight only tells the engineer he is swiftly 
approaching it Too late, often, the telling is, for 
saving. But Christianity's light, shot clear ahead 
on the pathway of the sinner, is never too late, if 
heeded. It is given expressly for warning and res- 
cue. 

2. Christianity shows the punishment to be of 
different degrees. It says, unto whomsoever much 
is given of him shall much be required. It says, it 
shall be more tolerable for wicked cities, like 
Sodom and Gomorrah, in the day of judgment, 
than for cities with far greater privileges, and those 
privileges unimproved. It says, those sinning with- 
out a knowledge of God's written law will not be 
judged by that written law, but only by such law 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 173 

as is written in their hearts. The punishment is to 
be exactly according to the sin, as determined by 
the Hght and the opportunity of each sinner. 

So the punishment of a heathen, groping in 
darkness, will be far different from, and far less 
than, the punishment of a rejecter of Christianity 
in the full blaze of the gospel. The punishment of 
one reared in a home of vice, never hearing the 
name of God but in blasphemy, taught by sur- 
rounding example only foulness and falsehood, will 
be far different from, and immeasurably less than, 
the punishment of one to whom religious instruc- 
tion, pious example, a father's counsels, and a 
mother's prayers have been given in vain. 

3. Christianity uses material images to represent 
this punishment. It represents the future abode 
of the finally impenitent as an "abyss," a "bottom- 
less pit," a "lake that burneth with fire and brim- 
stone," a Gehenna "where the worm dieth not and 
the fire is not quenched," as a place of "outer dark- 
ness," a "place of torture," and by other such tre- 
mendous images. These quotations, mind you, are 
not from Jonathan Edwards, or Dante, or Milton, 
but from Jesus and from His beloved disciples. Of 
course they are figurative. They can not be liter- 
ally understood. There can be no literal lake of 
fire, for then there would be no undying worm and 



174 CHRISTIAl^ITT AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

no bottomless pit. It is a spiritual world that lies 
beyond death, and the punishment is largely spirit- 
ual. It is the conscious soul that will suffer, through 
conscience, and memory, and revelation of the 
righteous judgment of God. They are figures of 
speech, therefore, by which Christianity represents 
future punishment. But what terrible figures they 
are — the most significant, most impressive; most 
awful in human language. As if it were impossi- 
ble by any figure to represent too vividly the an- 
guish of the mind! What are physical tortures 
compared with the agonies of a wrathful con- 
science? "The mind is its own place, and can itself 
be hell." • 

4. Christianity represents this future punishment 
as endless. It lifts no flag of eternal hope any- 
where over the future world. It reveals no point 
along the path of future punishment where the 
punishment shall end in annihilation. In proof of 
this I shall not enter into the discussion of the exact 
equivalent for the Greek word translated "ever- 
lasting" or "eternal" throughout the New 
Testament. I have no doubt of its meaning, as ap- 
plied to the future state, of either the saved or the 
lost. But I prefer now another line of discussion. 

Take, first, the unmistakable trend of the teach- 
ings of Jesus, and see if the irrevocableuess and 



CHKISTIANITT AND ENDLESS DEATH. 175 

dnality of His words concerning the dead that die 
in their sin, do not put it past all doubt that hope 
forever ends with the impenitent when life ends. 

He spake the parable of " the tares " and of " the 
net," and then put His own interpretation on them, 
saying, "So shall it be at the end of this world ; the 
angels shall sever the wicked from among the just, 
and shall cast them into the furnace of fire." He 
said there would be at the last those applying 
for admittance to heaven, to whom He would say, 
" I never knew you. Depart from Me." And, 
again, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlast- 
ing fire." He put those brief but terrible words, 
" The door was shut," into the parable of the ten 
virgins, as if there would come a time with some 
souls when it would be forever " too late." He 
said of those who should be invited, and w^ho 
should finally refuse to come to the gospel feast: 
»' None of those which were bidden shall taste of 
My supper." And yet are they to taste of it after 
all? He asked certain men how they could escape 
the damnation of hell. And He said that at that 
great judgment scene which He Himself pictured, 
and where He Himself should be the judge, 
"There will be gathered all nations, and there will 
be one great separation of the righteous and the 
wicked. The wicked on the left shall go away into 



176 CHEISTIANITT AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

everlasting punishment, and the righteous on tht, 
right into Hfe eternal." He lifts the v*^il once 
again, and distinctly tells us that they who would 
pass from that place of torment to that abode of 
the righteous, can not, for between the two there 
is a great gulf fixed. Here are two ways, two des- 
tinations, two futures, two certanties, two eternal 
realities, two conditions of endless existence, and 
only two, for all the world, clearly set before us by 
Him whom all Christians, infidels, materialists, 
moralists, scientists now unite to honor for His 
matchless tenderness and world-wide ' charity, and 
whose life is confessedly the loveliest ever lived 
among men. And this same Jesus says again and 
again that the one only thing which is to deter- 
mine which of these two eternal futures is to be the 
future of each soul hearing His gospel is the peni- 
tent and believing acceptance of this gospel, or its 
continued and willful rejection. He says the Son 
of Man, meaning Himself, is lifted up on the cross 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
but have eternal life. He says, " God so loved 
the world that He gave His only begotten Son 
that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, 
but have everlasting life." He says, again : " This 
is the will of Him that sent me, that everyone that 
believeth in Me may have everlasting life." Of 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 177 

like import are His solemn words : " Ye will not 
come to Me that ye might have life. Except ye 
repent ye shall all likewise perish. Except a man be 
born again he can not see the kingdom of God." 
Here it is, then, by Christ Himself — not by some 
stern herald of wrath, but by the being whose life 
and teachings have done more to make men love 
each other than all other influences in the world. 
There is, in all the Bible, no such terrific imagery of 
spiritual and endless death as His, and He certain- 
ly knows whether there is such .a death for the 
soul. What does He say about it? He calls it a 
damnation, a waihng and gnashing of teeth, a hell- 
fire, a torment, an everlasting punishment. It is 
true, as I have already said, that some of these are 
figurative terms, but if you range through the whole 
com.pass of human language you will find no words 
that can convey to the mind more impressive 
and mighty sense of the profound and awful reality 
of this death of the soul. 

There is another way of ordering this matter in 
our struggle after a possible conception that shall 
bring the realities of this truth in any impressive 
measure before us. 

What think ye of Christ? Who was He? Do 
you believe Him to be what these Scriptures de- 
clare — God manifest in the flesh? Who is God? 

23 



1T8 CHEISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

Is He not a being infinite, eternal, and unchange- 
able in His wisdom, power, holiness, justice, good- 
ness, and truth? He created the heavens and the 
earth. He appointed the stars their courses. 
He spangled infinite space with blazing suns. To 
whom will ye liken God ? It is He that sitteth 
upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants 
thereof are as grasshoppers? He weigheth the 
mountains in scales and the hills in a balance. To 
him a thousand years are as one day, and whole na- 
tions as a drop in the bucket. How can we meas- 
ure the being of whom such things can be said ? 
Who, by searching, can find out God ? Yet whither 
shall we flee from His presence ? The everlasting 
God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, 
holy, and just, and good, infinite in majesty and 
power, the august and mighty Jehovah, maker of 
all worlds and all beings of all worlds, breathing 
into man's nostrils the breath of life, so that he be- 
came a living soul, as able to speak this world out 
of existence as He was to speak it into existence, 
from everlasting to everlasting, the same yester- 
day, to-day, and forever, an invisible, everywhere 
present, all-wise, almighty Spirit — this is God. 
And Jesus was this God, God manifest in the flesh. 
He did the works of God and proved His power. 
He spake the words of God and proved His wis- 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 179 

dom. What is this divine being here for? What 
has tliis great God come into His own world to do ? 
Why has He taken the form of a servant and con- 
sented to the fashion of a man? God is in His 
own world and has not where to lay His head. 
Myriads of angels would be swift to do Him honor, 
and would count a smile frqm Him glory enough 
for eternity; but the men He has made turn their 
backs on Him and treat Him with open scorn. 
He submits to their insults. When He is reviled 
He meekly bears the reviling, and lets no light- 
nings blast the impious lips. And at last He, the 
God of the universe, whose throne is in the highest 
heavens, the God manifest in the flesh, allows 
Himself to be seized, to be tried in cruel mockery, 
to be unjustly accused of treason, — He, the King 
of kings, — to be crowned with thorns, to be led 
away in the midst of a rabble to a place of skulls 
and there nailed to a cursed tree and scoffed and 
jeered at until He is dead. 

I want you to think now why He did all that. 
Did He do it all for nothing? Certainly He did if 
it makes no difference v^hether men accept Jesus 
Christ or reject Him. He says He did it to seek 
and to save that which was lost. He says He did it 
that whosoever believeth in Him might not perish. 
And if to perish and to be lost mean what the Son 



180 CHRISTIAIsnTT AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

of God says they mean, if hell is the place of eter- 
nal despair and death that His terrible imagery 
represents it to be, then there was some reason for 
His coming. I can see how even God might be 
led to manifest Himself in the flesh, in a world 
where deathless souls were going down to the 
doom of eternal death, and how even He might 
rear a cross in that world and die on it, so as to 
save those souls. And He has done just this, the 
eternal God in Jesus Christ. Nothing but a work 
of infinite consequence would have brought Him 
from the skies. He saw all the realities of woe in- 
volved in the death of the soul, and He came for 
rescue. The cross and passion of the Son of God 
crowd a world of anguish into such a death. They 
tell us, as no words can, that it is an awful thing to 
die in one's sins. They reveal an awfulness and 
dreadfulness of death as the wages of sin that you 
can not find in the most vivid and intense language 
descriptive of the state of the lost. 

There is still another way of ordering this matter. 
Think of heaven itself. Let us turn our minds to 
that other world, the home of another order of be- 
ings — " an innumerable company " — the angels of 
God. John saw them round about the throne, ten 
thousand times ten thousand and thousands of 
thousands. They are called a great host — God's 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 181 

host. These angelic hosts are said to excel in 
strength, to have great power, to be swift of pass- 
age. They are occupied in doing God's command- 
ments, announcing God's law, conveying God's 
messages, protecting God's people, inflicting God's 
penalties, sharing in God's counsels, sounding 
God's praises. Theirs is a world of light and joy 
unspeakable, and full of glory. They are a high 
and privileged order of sinless intelligences, who 
kept their first estate, — unfallen spirits reflecting the 
glory of their God. 

Are they interested in our world? We are told 
they are. What is it that interests them? He 
who came from God, and went to God, and who 
was God, and whom all the angels of God worship — 
He tells us there is joy in the presence of the angels 
of God over one sinner that repenteth. 

What joy there was in the cities of the north 
after Gettysburg, when it was felt that Philadel- 
phia and Pittsburg were safe. What joy stirred 
all loyal hearts when the news came of the fall of 
Richmond, and it was felt that the country was 
safe. What tearful, thankful joy in individual 
homes when, after a bloody battle, the wires flashed 
the glad tidings : " Thank God, father, mother, 
your boy is safe !" 

But here is a joy that stirs a whole world — a 



182 CHEISTIAKTTY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

world of beings far away, superior to us, occupied 
with other interests, God's angels, an innumerable 
company, filled to the full with the satisfying de- 
lights of the service and the worship of heaven, 
bathed and bathing in the inefiable glory of the 
kingdom of God ; and the occasion of their joy, the 
incident that stirs and thrills them, is the repentance 
of a single sinner in this sinful world. Everj^ time 
one sinner turns from the error of his ways a tide 
of joy sweeps through all the hosts of heaven. 
" Saved," is the glad shout, " a soul saved from 
death." If the death is nothing, then the salvation 
is nothing, and the joy is a mockery, a farce — there 
is no joy. No whole world, distant, and glorious, 
and peopled with hosts of high intelligence, can be 
stirred with joy for nothing. I tell you the soul's 
death must be everything conceivable — yea, it must 
be with realities utterly inconceivable, or all heaven 
would not be moved with joy every time a soul is 
saved. Terrible must be the realities and powers 
of an endless death for the tidings of one poor sin- 
ner's escape to produce such an effect. Look, 
therefore, which way we will, whether at the di- 
rect scriptural statements of death as the penalty of 
sin, or at the agony of the cross as a means of res- 
cue, or at the joy of the angels of God over a rescue; 
we see from either that it must be a work of infi- 



CHETSTIAIOTY AIND ENDLESS DEATH. 183 

nite and eternal consequence — this work of re- 
demption. To save a soul is to save it from a 
death to which the w^ords of the Bible, and the 
passion of the cross, and the joy of the angels alike 
give a world of woeful meaning. Disciple of Jesus 
Christ, have you done such a work? Have you 
honestly, heartily, prayerfully, looking to God for 
help, directly and personally attempted to do it? 
Have you ever used all the means within your 
power to save one single soul? Have you ever sat 
down deliberately to think and study and plan and 
devise how you could best reach and influence, by 
what possible agency or instrumentality you could 
directly persuade an acquaintance, a friend, a scholar, 
a child, an associate, to come to Jesus? Is it not 
worth the while of every disciple of Christ to be 
doing this thing? Do you believe in this terrible 
death of the soul? Do you believe there are per- 
sons in your own pew, in your own family, in your 
own class, in your own place of business, who are 
in peril of this death ? If they were in peril of 
bodily death, and were going on heedless of the 
peril, blind to it, or careless concerning it, would 
you stand on ceremony? Would you wait long to 
warn them? Would not your love and anxiety 
make a way of reaching them ? But what is the 
death of the body to this other and second death of 
which I have been speaking? 



184 CHEISTIANITY AND ENDLESS DEATH. 

I well remember, some years ago, when a boat 
was upturned in the rapids of Niagara, and one of 
its occupants, swept down the stream, caught des- 
perate hold of a rock just above the falls. There 
he clung for long, long weary hours. Crowds 
gathered. Neighboring cities were telegraphed for 
implements of rescue. The interest and excite- 
ment grew intense. All manner of devices were 
suggested for reaching the imperiled man. One 
thing after another was tried and failed. Oh, what 
busy hands, swift feet, active minds, anxious hearts 
there were, all for the rescue of that one man. 
But help failed to reach him. He grew weaker 
and weaker, and at last let go the only thing that 
kept him from destruction. 

There are persons whom v^e know to-day to be 
in far worse peril than that. We see them. They 
are before our eyes. We meet them in our homes, 
in our Sunday-school classes, in our social circles, 
here in this house of God. Some of them are per- 
sonally very dear to us. It is the eternal death of 
the soul, they are in peril of. If they are not, 
then burn your Bibles and shut up the churches. 
I ask again, will you tell me what a gospel of sal- 
vation means, and why a gospel of salvation should 
be preached, that saves from nothing? If they are 
in peril, then the peril is imminent and deadly, be- 



CHRISTIANITY ANI) ENDLESS DEATH. 185 

cause the death is the death of the soul. Some of 
them are far down the rapids. Some possibly have 
reached the last rock to which they can cling. 
Oh, how often that rock is the memory of a godly 
mother's prayers. Souls will sometimes cling there, 
and hold to that memory as if they knew that to 
be swept away from that would be to be carried 
beyond the reach of mercy. And I do not wonder. 
If I were an impenitent child of godly parents, and 
should die so, I would rather go into eternity facing 
a legion of devils than my mother's prayers. But 
the hold of even a mother's prayers is weakening. 
Every day the steady downward current of evil 
is telling on the strength with which that mem- 
ory is held. Christians, you must to the rescue, or 
you will be too late. 

Go, I beseech you, and amidst the gloom and 
desolation and awful shadows that this subject casts 
before, hold up Christ's blood-stained cross, the 
beacon of hope, the herald of salvation, the promise 
of deliverance, the joy of the disconsolate, the li^ht 
of life, the rock of ages, the savior of sinners, the 
gift of God. 

Here, I lift it again to-day: "Behold and be- 
lieve," says the voice of the Lord. Standing in the 
Lord's stead, I repeat the blessed words : " Behold 
and believe!" 

24 



VIII. 

CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 



No human capacity ever yet saw the whole of a thing; 
but we may see more and more of it the longer we look. 

— RUSKIN. 

The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. 

— The Apostle Paul. 

On earth, in heaven, everywhere throughout the universe, 
this is eternal life — the only eternal life known to Christi- 
anity — union or reimion of the created mind with God. 

— John Young. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 



If man is to die at last like a dog, why should 
he live like an angel ? If death ends all, then it 
would be difficult to prove that the " Let us eat and 
drink for to-morrow we die " philosophy is not the 
true one. On a question as to enjoyment or em- 
ployment, laughter or labor, toying or toiling, the 
merry-makers would be likely to have the best of 
it. But if there is a life after death the conditions of 
which are decided by the life this side of death, and 
decided in such way that the conditions are ever- 
lasting, and if one way of going through the world 
makes them conditions of sorrow, and another way 
of going through the world makes them conditions 
of joy, it ought to make a mighty difference in our 
view of " the loaves and fishes " theory of life. 
Baser and nobler being begin to take on an infinite 
meaning, as being is stamped with immortality, 
and men are made to feel the everlasting — to stand 
in the face of it, live in the light of it, gather 
motive from it. 

189 



190 CHEISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 

This is what Christianity compels men to do, 
whenever it gets a candid hearing. Everywhere 
through its record it sounds out the thought of 
eternity. Christianity is meaningless if life is to 
be snuffed out at last like a candle. It asserts and 
assumes, in the repose of sublimest confidence, that 
there is to be perpetuated existence beyond the 
grave. As living and convincing proof that death 
does not end all, it offers the resurrection of its 
Christ from the dead. And this amazing fact is 
so set round and buttressed up with corroboration 
of its reality, that no suggested theory of fraud or 
fanaticism by which to account for it, has ever yet 
won any wide acceptance from intelligent unbelief. 

But not only does Christianity confront men 
with this thought of eternity — it confirms their 
fears with reference to the conditions of that eter- 
nity, if they go on as they are and " die in their 
sins." Through all the centuries and in all climes 
the altars have smoked with sacrifices for sin, as 
men have sought thus to get rid of their haunting 
apprehensions of a world beyond this. Christianity 
fipeaks in solemn confirmation of these apprehen- 
sions; says there is reason for these fears; makes 
certain what was imagined and guessed, and more or 
less distinctly defined in human consciousness. But 
it does not leave men with this disclosure. It 



CHEISTIANITT AND ENDLESS LIFE. 191 

illuminates the track of doom — not in any joy of the 
revelation, but for warning and rescue. While it 
would have men know where they are going, it 
would have them go where perpetuated being will 
be perpetuated and ever increasing delight. So it 
presents an alternative. It makes an offer. It 
presses a tremendous motive. 

While it tells nien of everlasting death, it offers 
men everlasting life. It takes this idea of in- 
destructible being, and though it paints the shadows 
until they deepen into a very " blackness of dark- 
ness " along sin's eternal path, it tells men they 
need not walk there— for " the gift of God is eter- 
nal life through Jesus Christ^ 

Now while we may not grasp in anything like 
its amplitude and glory this " eternal life," which is 
God's gift to every man however lost to manhood, 
and however sunk in sin, who comes to believe in 
the Son of God and to accept Him as his personal 
Savior, we can gather many definite things from 
the gospel record concerning it, that may possibly 
be corrective of false notions, and that may be 
persuasives to its joyful acceptance. 

I. This, first, that the eternal life which is God's 
gift is not all in the future world. 

The impression is widely prevalent that the re- 
wards of Christian discipleship are a matter ofexpec- 



192 CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 

tation. Eternal life is thought to have to do solely 
with eternity. The common conception of it is of 
something vague and ethereal. Far too exclusively 
it is referred to, as if its realities were impossible 
of realization to any extent whatever this side of 
the grave. 

But the truth is, eternal life begins on the in- 
stant of a personal, believing acceptance of Jesus 
Christ. To this effect is repeated apostolic testi- 
mony. " This is the record, that God hath given 
to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He 
that hath the Son hath life." To " know him th^t 
is true," and to be " in Him that is true, even in 
his Son Jesus Christ — this is eternal life." And 
Jesus himself said, " He that heareth my word and 

believeth hath everlasting life, and shall not 

come into condemnation; but is passed from death 
unto life." Hence the terms, "new creature," 
" born again " or "born from above," " life out of 
death," " created anew." When that change occurs 
which answers to these terms, the eternal life begins. 
And therefore the righteous enter upon their eter- 
nal life when they become righteous, i. e., when 
they by faith appropriate the righteousness of 
Christ and so become heirs of an incorruptible in- 
heritance. They do not enter into all the fulness 
of that inheritance, but they do get foretastes and 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 193 

antepasts of the exceeding and external weight of 

glory- 
Exactly what this eternal life is, it may be some- 
what difficult to define, but in general it may be 
said to be the presence of a new principle in the 
soul — a principle of holiness planted there of 
God the Spirit — a disposition averse to evil, and 
that allies the soul with God, and makes fellowship 
with Him a dear delight. The blessednesses 
of this life are peace of conscience, sense of 
pardon and reconciliation with God, joyful com- 
munion with Christ and more and more like- 
ness to Him in every sweet grace, as the years go 
on and God does His transforming and beautifying 
w^ork in the heart. 

This is not largely outward, it does not strike the 
eye, it does not appeal to the sense; it may consist 
with failure in worldly plans, and poverty in earth- 
ly treasures and loss of earthly friends ; but does 
not all our truest joy hang on what we are and 
how we are conditioned 'within? Because a man 
has success in trade, and large accumulation of 
wealth, and ability to command all appliances for 
ease and comfort and aesthetic and social gratifica- 
tion, is he happy? He may be; but it is not his 
riches, nor his success in trade, nor his brilliant so- 
cial relations that make him so. If he do not carry 
2^ 



X94 CHRISTIANITY AITO ENDLESS LIFE. 

sources of joy within him, into the midst of his 
riches, he will get very little joy from these outside 
things. I have been in princely homes, where 
everything was commanded that wealth could buy, 
and I have found skeletons there that made those 
homes more like sepulchres, whose brilliant gar- 
nishing seemed the saddest of mockeries and whose 
appearance of joy seemed the hollowest of preten- 
tious shams. And I have been in homes of pov- 
erty that were like outer courts of heaven, enriched 
with all the riches of God. True joy is joy within, 
joy of soul, in truth, in love, in the good and the 
beautiful. It is the joy which Jesus left as a leg- 
acy to his disciples. That joy must be in us, before 
our joy can be full. It comes to the children of 
God in some measure when they first believe. It 
inci-easingly comes to them, in deeper and more bles- 
sed measure as their life goes on, if they open their 
hearts to its inward flow. In witness whereof, 
mark the testimony of an Apostle willing to suffer 
" the loss of all things" that he may know more of 
Christ. Listen to another Apostle on the victo- 
rious heights of Christian confidence, "glorying in 
tribulations." Hear the intellectual Edwards, so 
grandly endowed with reason that he could never 
be deemed a mere emotional enthusiast, telling of 
the blessedness and joy that came to his soul in 



CHRISTIAiaTY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 195 

such a tide that he felt he could not live, if God 
did not stay it. Take the case of Payson almost 
torn asunder with the spasms of bodily anguish, 
yet in his inward spirit and under the communica- 
tions of God to the soul, filled with serene, ineffable 
delight. Take humble Christians this world over, 
finding joy in service and sacrifice, and content- 
ment every where, and rest in trouble, and comfort 
in sorrow, and hope in disappointment, and Christ 
in all! And be sure from this and much else that 
might be named, that the blessedness and peace and 
joy of eternal life are not all in the future. I 
have dwelt at length on this point, because the 
earthly Christian life is so commonly regarded as 
the self-denying and joyless way of purchasing the 
heavenly life, where and where only it is thought 
the joys and rewards of Christian discipleship are 
realized and the blessedness of the life-eternal is 
first experienced. 

2. The second thing I have to say of the eternal 
life is that it is not the same and never will be the 
same to all the saved. Heaven is no sea of bliss 
where the righteous are to float in equal and ever- 
lasting content. Future blessedness is no common, 
ethereal state, where ethereal beings shall sing 
ethereal psalms. Eternal life is not a dead level to 
all who enter upon it. The gift of God is given to 



196 CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 

all who believe in Jesus, and the gift is eternal 
life. But there is nothing more infinitely varied 
than life, any life. It nowhere finds manifestation 
in exactly the same forms. Take animal life — 
what a vast difference — what an infinite diversity; 
oyster and Leviathan ; crawling parasite and soar- 
ing eagle. Take mental life — what two minds have 
exactly the same condition, and capacities, and 
methods ? No two trees are the counterpart each of 
the other. Nay, no two leaves are such. Life every- 
where is in vast and endless variety. So it is with 
life eternal, that gift of God, constituting in its 
length, and breadth, and height, and depth, the re- 
wards of the righteous. There is one glory of the 
sun, and another of the moon, and another of 
the stars; for one star differeth from another star 
in glory. The penitent dying thief is not going 
into heaven like the triumphant dying Paul. The 
man who is saved so as by fire, his work of wood, 
hay and stubble all burned, is not to have the same 
reward as the man with an abundant entrance into 
heaven, his work of gold and silver and precious 
stones abiding, bearing the test, and passing through 
the fire without being consumed. Remember 
the word of the Lord to the ten servants en- 
trusted with ten pounds. On the reckoning day, 
one came, saying. Lord, thy pound hath gained 



CHEISTIAISIITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 197 

ten. And the Lord said, Well, ihou good servant, 
have thou authority over ten cities. And another 
came, saying. Lord, thy pound hath gained five. 
And the Lord said. Be thou over five cities. The 
rew^ard v^as according to the service. Not of debt, 
but of grace. "Lay up for yourselves treasures in 
heaven," said the Master. We can do it. We are 
doing it, by what we are, and how we live, and 
love, and pray. Eternal life is the portion of every 
one who believes — it is the gift of God through 
Jesus; but the forms of it, the manifestations of 
it, the capital of it, and the capacities and accumu- 
lations — the riches, and glories, and joys of it, will 
be as varied as the fidelities, and the struggles and 
the consecrations, and the services rendered in the 
temporal and earthly life. The life-long criminal, 
hoary with iniquity, steeped to the full in sin and 
transgression, and yielding only the fag-ends of his 
godless life to God, if the surrender be in penitent 
and believing sincerity, will be accepted in the all- 
embracing love of the Father, and will be admitted 
to heaven. The blood of Jesus is equal to that 
ransom. But that poor recovered wreck will get 
no such investment and experience of glory and of 
joy, as he who after high service for God on earth 
mounts up to heaven on the wings of a triumphant 
faith, saying, " I have fought a good fight, I have 



198 CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIEE. 

finished my course, I have kept the faith." To 
make their heaven the same heaven, their life the 
same life, their reward the same reward, is against 
analogy, against reason, against the "word .of God. 
There will be points of resemblance, but points of 
wide contrast, too. There will be some things in 
common characterizing each. There will be other 
things most different, deepening and enriching one 
life far above the other. 

Let us see from the light of Scripture what all 
who are heirs of eternal life will have in common. 

Freedom from sin. That is one thing, and a grand 
thing in the life of the sons and daughters of God. 
Moral evil will be eliminated forever. There, there 
entereth nothing that defileth. The blood of Jesus 
cleanseth from all sin. No matter what the differ- 
ence in condition here, that blood applied to human 
hearts will secure entire sinlessness there. The 
penitent and believing publicans and harlots enter- 
ing the kingdom of heaven will be clean, every 
whit — as perfectly free from pollution as the white- 
robed angels who have never been defiled with the 
pitch of sin. The soul of the penitent malefactor, 
seamed and ridged and blackened through and 
through as it may have been with the smoke and 
fire and mad riot of passion and lust up to the very 
hour of his execution, will be as spotlessly pure as 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 199 

the soul of the little child lifted out of its mother's 
arms into the bosom of God. Nothing tainted 
with moral evil can enter heaven. The poison of 
sin will never be allowed there. There will be no 
evil done, and no thought of evil, and no desire 
that way. 

We all know how it is now ; how sin and selfish- 
ness mar our best service; how thoughts come 
trooping in upon us most unwelcome; how we are 
wronged by others in deed and word and thought; 
and how we are prone to wrong them. All this 
will be ended in the sanctified life of the redeemed 
in heaven; ended with all of them when 
they come to die and pass up to the skies. It en- 
ters into and is common to the rewards of all the 
xi^hteous^ freedofn from sin. 

Freedomfroni suffering and sorrow^ follows from 
this as another condition common to all life in 
heaven. The inhabitant shall no more say, I am 
sick. There shall be no more pain. Tears will 
be wiped away forever. No bodily aches, no fe- 
vers, no exhaustions, no thrills of physical torture; 
and no mental trouble, no anguish of spirit, no 
pangs of conscience, no jealousies and bickerings 
and distrusts will be there. Sin is the prolific 
source of suffering here. But the sinless place will 
be painless and sorrowless. And this, too, will be 



200 CHEISTIANITY A^D ENDLESS LIFE. 

common to all tne saved. A Mary Magdalene 
will be just as free from suffering in mind and body 
as Mary, the mother of Jesus. The sinner saved 
in the eleventh hour, and so as by fire, will be just 
as exempt from every shade of sorrow and every 
form of pain as the sainted man of God who, 
through a half century has turned many unto right- 
eousness, and preached the gospel around the 
world. 

Freedom from deatJi^ too, will be another con- 
dition common to all the saved. This is involved 
in the very idea of life as given of God. That gift 
eternal makes death and every concomitant of death 
forever impossible. The resurrection and the life 
will have swallowed up death in victory. Body 
and spirit will be broken forever away from his 
fell dominion and power. There will be no grow- 
ing weakness, no decrepitude, no decay and dissolu- 
tion, no turning to the dust again, no graves open- 
ing along heaven's paths and crying, "Give, give." 
And there will be no death of soul, no spiritual 
death, no approaches to it or likeness of it, no black- 
ness of darkness of death from the hidings of God's 
face and the frowns of his justice, but life, positive, 
uninterrupted, endless, cloudless. "My sheep hear 
my voice and they follow me. And I give unto 
them eternal life, and they shall never perish. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 201 

The gift of God is eternal life. Once saved, and 
the soul, any soul, every soul, is just as fully assured 
of perpetual freedom from death, as is the Infinite 
author of life himself — Jehovah, God. 

To this extent the teachings of Scripture make 
it plain, the eternal life will be shared alike by all the 
saved. The word of God makes these things com- 
mon to all who believe in Jesus. Indeed, salvation 
in the gospel sense is impossible without them. A 
bare salvation implies them and necessitates them. 
They are the promised conditions of the future life 
common to all. And thus far heaven is one. My 
heaven and your heaven, if we truly believe in 
Jesus, and the believing harlot's heaven, and Paul's 
heaven, and Abraham's, and Isaac's, and Jacob's, 
and the heaven crf ^ihe Son of God, will have alike 
these characteristics; it will be sinless, sorrowless, 
deathless. 

But this is all negative, and life is positive; this 
is passive, and hfe is active; this is fixedness, and 
life is development. Blessed as it will be to be rid 
of sin, to be rid of sorrow, to be rid of death, it is 
only the blessedness of negation. The powers, ca- 
pacities, endowments, gifts, graces, possibilities, 
attainments, accumulations on the positive side now 
come in for consideration, ^nd here the saved 
^art company; here the eternal life ceases to be 
26 



202 CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LITE. 

common, and becomes different; here the blessed- 
ness of the righteous gets degrees, and varying pro- 
portions and differing altitudes, according as their 
several pounds entrusted to them of God have 
gained in the earthly stewardship, ten or five, or 
two or one. 

Take two ideas warranted by God's word, con- 
cerning this eternal life, the capacities that may be 
developed, and the treasures that may be laid up in 
its progress. First, the capacities that may be devel- 
oped. All life has development for its law, and 
spiritual life is not an exception. The Bible recog- 
nizes differing capabilities in this life of God ; speaks 
of great faith and little faith ; a cold love and a 
burning, absorbing love; a knowledge that is weak, 
seeing through a glass darkly, and a knowledge 
face to face; an infancy in Jesus, and a maturing 
manhood, a growth upward, unto the measure of the 
stature of Christ's fulness into the same image, from 
glory to glory, as if there were no limitation to the 
soul's possibilities in its ascending march to the di- 
vine heights where God is beckoning it. Paul 
passed up some of these heights before he died. 
His faith was strong, his love ardent, his knowl- 
edge great, his comprehension of things spiritual, 
vast. He grew as he labored. He won enlarging 
capacity in his laborious toils. Other men have 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 203 

done the same and women too. Saints of God in 
all ages since, have grown glorious in spiritual 
stature, have seen far into the deep things of God; 
have grasped mysteries of faith and love, have 
fathomed depths and scaled heights, have devel- 
oped capabilities and powers, as they have toiled 
and prayed, and loved and wrestled, and studied 
and pondered, and opened their hearts and minds 
to the revealing Spirit, and been led of Him into all 
truth. Think of the dying Payson, though racked 
with pain, yet swimming in a sea of glory. Think 
of the dying Scott, going down into the valley of 
death, saying, "This is heaven begun. I have done 
with darkness forever, forever. " Think of 
the men that have been distinguished for 
their walk with God — the godly McCheyne and 
Edwards, and Chalmers and Baxter, and Alexan- 
der, and Barnes and Skinner. These have com- 
menced their heavenly life, enriched and enlarged 
far beyond the measure of millions of others who 
have gone into heaven just as free from sin and 
sorrow and death. 

Take now the other idea, the treasures that may 
be laid up. What they are, I do not attempt defi- 
nitely and positively to say. But that they are laid 
uf by those who are faithful, we have the Master's 
own word for. They are being put away there of 



204 CHEISTIANITY AND EKDLESS LIFE. 

the infinite God, to be brought out and given to the 
faithful toilers, when they shall be called from the 
field of labor. The Psalmist burst forth with this 
grand thought as he sang, "O how great is thy 
goodness which thou hast laid up for them that fear 
thee, which thou hast wrought out for them that 
trust in Thee before the sons of men." The spir- 
itual athletes, the self-denying toilers, the walkers 
with God, those that fellowship most lovingly and 
yearningly and intimately with Jesus, those count- 
ing all things but loss for Him, and proving it by 
the way they live and love and labor, have the lar- 
gest investments and the greatest gains. It must 
be so. We have divine intimations of it, precious 
scriptural hints and suggestions answering to, and 
fortifying, this natural expectation of our hearts. 

We are not all going to enter upon the same 
life. In some respects it will be the same. In 
others it will be widely in contrast and dififerent, 
just as our fidelities in service and sacrifice here have 
differed. Mere freedom from sin will not lift the 
soul to the highest altitudes of spiritual efficiency 
and power and perception. Mere freedom from 
suffering will not lift a soul into that perfected 
and exalted bliss of being which some surely have 
entered as they have entered heaven. Mere free- 
dom from death will not transform into the highest 
and dVinest life. 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 205 

But, it is objected, if one is entirely happy in 
heaven, without sin and without sorrow, happy ac- 
cording to one's measure, to the full, what brooks 
it that others with larger capital and spiritual 
capabilities and acquisitions, have larger degree of 
happiness according to their measure? This. A 
snail is happy according to its measure. So is a 
free and soaring lark. Is there no preference be- 
tween the two ? A child is happy, with a circum- 
ference of joy, struck by the shortest radius — happy 
according to its measure. So is a man, with his 
developed and richly stored mind and heart, as pure 
as the child, yet unfolded and enlarged, so as to 
strike the circumference of a thousand fold greater 
and deeper joy than the child. Is there no prefer- 
ence between the two? Is it all one whether I 
listen contentedly and delightedly, with an unculti- 
vated ear, to the rudest melody, satisfied with it 
because I can appreciate that and no more — or 
whether I listen, thrilled and entranced, with a 
cultivated ear, to the most delicious harmonies, be- 
cause my soul is educated and attuned to the higher 
musical excellence? The case is too clear for 
question. To say for a soul to be happy according 
to its measure is enough — is to say it is just as well 
to be one remove from a laughing idiot, as to be a 
high intelligence amidst the presence and throne- 



206 CHEISTIANITT AND ENDLESS LIFE. 

angels of God. It is better, vastly better, and it will 
be better everlastingly, to have an abundant entrance 
and a large reward in heaven, than to be saved so 
as by fire, with only negations to start with in the 
life to come. 

3. The eternal life as it is comprehended and ex- 
perienced will be increasingly blessed and glorious 
forever and ever. It is life's law to develop. And 
eternal life is eternal development. We cannot 
take that in. We do not know what that means. 
We do not know what we shall be. But it means, 
among other things that are inconceivable, some 
things that we may comprehend. It means a 
memory that shall lose nothing, a mind that shall 
pervert nothing, a heart that shall repel nothing, 
but love on, and reason on, and store on, through 
illimitable ages, having the freedom of God's uni- 
verse, and possibilities of glory and wisdom and 
affection and power exceeding abundantly above all 
we can tell or think. Everything that God has will 
be spread out and laid open to the children of God. 
The riches of God's creative wisdom and love, the 
riches of His grace, the riches of His glory, the 
kingdoms of creation, redemption and reward 
piled one above another, in every direction an 
absolutely inconceivable infinitude — what heart can 
conceive, what mind measure these things.? We 



CHRISTIANITY AND ENDLESS LIFE. 207 

are confounded by the very attempt, and can only 
cry with the enraptured, yet baffled apostle, O the 
depths, the infinite depths of the riches of the 
wisdom and knowledge and love of God! How 
unsearchable are they! How past finding out! 

And as these riches unfold, the increasing knowl- 
edge will bring increasing joy. The joys of 
the righteous from the very constitution of their 
life, must be positively and infinitely progressive. 
This is of God and it is all we can say about it. 
It is a power and a mystery of bliss beyond all 
mortal conceiving. It is God's own mystery, 
God's own glory, God's own gift, God's sole 
almighty power, revealing himself in undiminished 
freshness and novelty to the righteous though ages 
on ages, giving to them as his gift of eternal life a 
capacity of bliss forever enlarging and a reality of 
bliss forever accumulating. 

This is life — eternal life, purchased for and 
brought to and given every believer in Christ 
Jesus. It is partially realized at the very begin- 
ning of the Christian life; it is of varying beauty 
and blessedness and glory according to the service 
rendered and spiritual development secured, and 
the accumulations made; and it is capable of 
boundless increase, for it is everlasting. God be 
praised that we have the possibility of such an infi- 



208 CHEISTIAJSITTT AND ENDLESS LIFE. 

nitely perfect and glorious salvation. God be 
praised that Jesus is able to raise us out of such an 
abyss of ruin as Christianity tells us we are rush- 
ing into, to such a height of joy and glory as 
Christianity promises to every one that believeth. 
The ruin is before you, child of sin, but you 
need not share it. Hell is a reality, sinner against 
God, but you need not enter it. It would be an 
utterly false benevolence in me to shrink from 
making known to you your guilt and danger. It 
would be a lying sympathy and a most reprehensi- 
ble and contemptible dread of giving offence, if I 
should neglect to say, what the Lord Jesus with pro- 
found emphasis and solemn earnestness has said, 
He that believeth not the Son shall not see life, 
but the wrath of God abideth on him. But true 
and awful as it is, that the wages of sin is death, 
and that if you continue in the service of sin you 
will be paid sin's dreadful wages — it is also as true 
that the gift of God is eternal life through yesus 
Christ. O take the gift, if it be not already yours 
by faith, take this free and boundless gift of life — 
believe in Jesus and become an heir of God and a 
joint heir with Christ to the inheritance " that is 
incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not 
away." 



IX. 

CHRISTIANITY AND PLEASURE. 



27 



He buys honej too dear who licks it from thorns. 

— Old Proverb. 

This same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doee 
not show the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the 
world half so stately and daintily as candle lights. 

— Lord Bacon* 

Gladness is sown for the upright in heart. 

— The Psalmist. 

Fly the pleasure which bites to-morrow. — Proverb. 



CHRISTIANITY AND PLEASURE. 



Of all the goodly fellowship of the Prophets, 
the Old Testament saint who most completely 
voices the experience of Christian hearts, is he who 
went singing through the world. Praises and 
thanksgivings and aspirations and adorations still 
flow in great tides of joy through his speech. 
" The Psalms" get thumbed as no other scriptures 
do, save where David's Lord himself appears. 

Yet David knew something of sorrow. There 
were days of his full of mourning and bitterness, 
when his songs were changed into sighings. But 
his very griefs sent him sounding the depths of more 
blessed experiences, so that his sighs changed back 
again into songs, and joys flashed from the very 
swing of his sorrows. Praise was most often upon 
his lips, and he thanked God with a healthy, robust 
heartiness that put it past all doubt that it was joyful 
tribute he brought. Joy must have beamed in the 
eye and glowed in the face, even as it flowed out 
211 



212 CHRISTIAinTT AND PLEASURE. 

in the speech and the song, of this sweet singer of 
Israel. 

It has come down the centuries. It is as much 
a fruit of Christian trust to-day as when David 
swept his glad harp. " I will be glad and rejoice 
in thee" sang the Psalmist. " Bless the Lord, O 
my soul, and forget not all his benefits." " Sing 
unto the Lord, O ye saints of His, and give thanks." 
" Let the righteous be glad : let them rejoice before 
the Lord; yea, let them rejoice exceedingly." 
" Shout for joy all ye that are upright in heart." 
And the Apostle, ages after, takes up the strain, 
and says: " Rejoice in the Lord always, and again 
I say rejoice." The kingdom of God is not gloom 
and unrest, but '*joy and peace." And the fruit 
of the Spirit is " peace and joy." Peace like a 
river — joy unspeakable. 

But this is not the common estimation. This is 
not the world's way of looking at it. Religion 
gets painted with a sad countenance. Christianity 
is prevalently regarded as opposed to pleasure; its 
flowers a night-shade; its psalms a miserere'^ its 
joys after death, not this side of it. " God is thought 
a hard creditor; man a poor debtor; religion the 
sum he is to pay." Hence, to be pious is esteemed 
a melancholy sort of a thing, an abandonment of 
dear delights, and an entrance upon a kind of House 



CHRISTIANITY AND PLEASIJEE. 213 

of Correction work. Many devotees of the world 
look at it, not as a thing good in itself, but as an 
unnatural self-denial, to be avoided if one dared — ■ 
a burden and a weariness in this life, to help one 
get " saved " in the next. The often acknowleged, 
and more often unacknowledged though really- 
present and controlling reason for not entering 
upon Christian discipleship is the reluctance to give 
up worldly joy. 

The idea is cherished that joy must be turned 
out of doors before religion can come in; that the 
pious must put on moral gyves and hand-cuffs and 
go restrained, burdened, joyless through the world. 
The young, at least, are not ready for that. They 
mean to rejoice in their youth and opening man- 
hood and womanhood, and to freely quaff the wine 
of the world's delights, and by and by, when the 
freshness of life is gone, and their hearts have 
cheered them with earthly things until the 
delicious zest and sweetness of their enjoyment are 
gone, they purpose to be religious and join the 
Church, and go soberly and devoutly and self- 
denyingly the rest of the earthly way, so as to 
meet .the requisite gospel conditions and obtain a 
share of eternal happiness. 

Now this view of religion, prevailing so largely 
in the gay circles of worldly life, certainly does not 



214 CHEISTIAiaTY AND PLEASURE. 

square with the scriptural representations. Chris- 
tian experience is there set forth as a thing of bound- 
ing delights. "Rejoice in the Lord always." "Serve 
Him with gladness." "Shout aloud for joy." "Enter 
His gates with thanksgiving." "Be glad and rejoice 
ye righteous." "Gladness is sown for the upright in 
heart." The Gospel is called "good tidings of great 
joy," Of a city where it greatly spread, it is said, 
"There was great joy in that city." Christians are 
spoken of as rejoicing in Christ with joy unspeak- 
able and full of glory, and as rejoicing in God's 
word, as one that findeth great spoil. The king- 
dom of heaven is likened unto treasure hid in a field; 
the which, when a man hath found, for joy thereof, 
he buyeth, selling all that he hath that he may make 
the joy-giving treasure his own. There is nothing 
of the sombre and the austere about all this. A pre- 
vailingly sad countenance is impossible in such 
moods of the spirit. 

How happens it then that Christianity is so fre- 
quently thought to be opposed to pleasure? 

I. It arises from false notions of what Chris- 
tianity really is and requires, A nun, a monk, a 
hermit, a rigid recluse, is not a representative of 
the Christian religion. Yet these, who have be- 
come infidel to society, turning their backs upon 
what God has ordained in the social state, have 



CHEISTTANITT AND PLEASURE. 215 

been set up by the Church as models, and com- 
mended as pre-eminent examples of devotion. 
Read the record of such a life as that of St. Hugh, 
Archbishop of Lyons. It was his " constant 
prayer that God would extinguish in his heart all 
attachment to creatures." " His love of heavenly 
things made all temporal affairs seem burdensome 
and tedious." " Women he would never look in 
the face, so that he knew not the features of his 
own mother," How utterly at war all this with 
the dearest instincts of our hearts, and how utter 
the misconception of the religion of Him who put 
holy seal upon marriage by his gracious presence 
and miraculous blessing, who loved Martha and 
Mary and Lazarus in that dear home in Bethany, 
and one of whose dying acts was a tender provision 
for his own mother. Yet it is just such morbid ex- 
hibitions of devotion that have been extolled by 
the Church of Rome. Piety has been symbolized 
by monkish seclusion, content with parched peas 
and a water-cress. Ecclesiastical fanaticism has 
fettered the senses, put them in duress, tortured 
them to silence, made a blank solitude, and called 
it peace. The fulness and frequency of fastings, 
the abundance of mortifications, and the number 
of repeated prayers, have been the exalted tests of 
religious faithfulness. And those wearing dark, 



216 CHKISTIAIslTY AXD PLEASURE. 

sad, woe-stained faces, have been honored with 
saint-hood, and their pictures hung round the walls 
of convents and cathedrals. As if black were the 
color of heaven! As if a resemblance to midnight 
were a proof of grace! The God who says the 
fast he has chosen is not to spread sackcloth and 
ashes, but to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo 
the heavy burdens, to break every yoke, to deal 
bread to the hungry and covering to the naked, 
the God who gave us flowers and carolling birds, 
and who so often wreathes and girdles the green 
earth with smiles, never sent his servants into the 
world to live such a lie as that. 

The burden of the Gospel message is glad 
tidings of great joy to all people. Change that, 
and put the lie upon it by making a mock at joy 
and renouncing it — above all by renouncing it in 
the name of God, and the world will swing in- 
evitably to the opposite extreme of reckless dis- 
sipation. 

2. Another reason for the prevalent impression 
that Christianity is opposed to pleasure is this: 
the austere and unsmiling mien of so many 
Christians^ in connection with their religious life. 
They wear sad countenances. They seem slaves 
*at reluctant toil, instead of glad freemen in Christ 
Jesus. They go moaning and mourning where 



CHRISTIAKITT AND PLEASURE. 217 

they ought to go singing songs of gladness. They 
take on looks that betoken anything but a residence 
in the temple where joy dwelleth. 

Now a part of this seeming sadness may be jus- 
tified and proved consistent with Christianity's 
claim to be a service of joy. 

The deepest joy does not express itself in laugh- 
ter, but in tears. The mother, getting back her 
loved child again, rescued from imminent and 
deadly peril — as she clasps it in her arms, 
saved^ does she laugh? or weep? The song 
or the story that steals down into our hearts and 
opens the fountains where tears have their home — 
is not that the song or the story occasioning an 
inner delight, sweeter and deeper and richer far 
than that we express by rapturous applause? Who 
does not know that when we are fullest of joy, we 
are full to weeping? and that then there is a very 
luxury in tears? That then tears are joy's natural 
utterance? So it is, often, with God's people. 
Their dearest resorts are Valleys of Baca. Their 
choicest hours are when the fountains overflow. 
Their heavenliest experiences are tearful, for the 
very depths of joy they go sounding. They weep 
at their feasts of love, and they cannot help it, but 
a bow of promise and of love is set in every tear- 
drop, for the glory of the sun of righteousness 
shining through. 28 



218 CHEISTIAJnTT AND PLEASURE. 

Then again there are times when earnest, godly 
men are made acquainted with such ghastly forms 
of wickedness, and get so impressed with the sin 
and woe of the world, "the sad sight of private 
suffering, and the sadder sight of conscious and tri- 
umphant wickedness born with an arithmetic in- 
stead of a conscience, trampling the needy down 
to dust and treating the Almighty with sneer and 
scoiF," that they cannot help wearing an earnest, 
sad, exceeding sorrowful face. But Christianity is 
not what puts such look on them. They see the 
dominance in the world's heart, of that hell of evil 
which is opposed to Christianity : and that makes 
them take on at times so sad an earnestness. It is 
only Christianity with its blessed hopes and prom- 
ises that can ever wash that sadness out of their 
faces. But with all due allowance for this, let it 
be confessed, there is much of sombre-hued piety 
for which there is no excuse; and which misrep- 
resents religion, instead of illustrating and adorn- 
ing it. You will see Christians held to the Lord's 
service by slavish fear. Their consciences have 
compelled them to take sides, not their hearts. 
They get no joy from their religion. It is no won- 
der, therefore, that no joy beams in their faces, 
when they are discharging religious duties. It is 
not in the nature of a thing that is irksome to give 



CHRISTIANITY AND PLEASURE. 219 

a sparkle to the eye, and buoyancy to step, and 
lightness to the spirit. But mark such Christians, 
when the restraints of Christian service are off and 
the forms of godliness are put away. See the flush 
of the face and the flash of the eye, and the eager, 
bounding joy of the spirit, as religion is forgotten 
in the whirl of pleasure. The world notes such con- 
trasts, and says, "Christianity is hostile to enjoy- 
ment and repressive of joy; for these people, as 
soon as they get away from religious duties, are 
glad enough." But what an unjust and shameful 
inference! It is a want of Christianity and not 
Christianity itself, that makes so many Christians 
wear a weary, sad, unsmiling look when at their 
worship and service for God. They make hard 
work of their piety, because their piety is not al- 
lowed to make much work with them. They do 
not like it. Their whole hearts are not in it. 
They browse along the borders of the goodly land, 
instead of entering into the rich pastures thereof. 
They live at a cold distance from Christ, in- 
stead of getting near enough to taste the best and 
rarest sweets of Christian discipleship. It is out 
of all reason to expect that from such following, 
joy shall come. Christianity is not at fault. It is 
the fearful absence of it, that dresses in such dole- 
ful, dismal, cheerless garb the piety of some profes- 



220 CHEISTIANITY AKD PLEASURE. 

sors. Will you get heat from an iceberg ? or the 
song of the soaring lark from a toad? or the touch 
of softness from solid granite? Well, neither can 
you get the glow and gladness of joyous, bound- 
ing Christian life from a dead form. If the dead 
form hang out its appropriate signals, do not say 
these funeral weeds are the sign and fruit of religious 
life. If these miserable formalists look sad and go 
sighing and whining to their pious toil do not 
charge it upon Christianity. 

3. A third occasion for the impression that 
Christianity is opposed to pleasure is the character 
of its doctrines. It is constantly telling of sin and 
its condemnation. Its preachers, it is said, are 
never done with exposing human depravity and 
warning against retribution. It must be a dark- 
visaged and gloomy thing that comes thrusting 
itself into the world with such heralding. But if 
the revelation be the truth, is it not best for man 
to know it? And if along with the disclosure of 
the disease there is offered an all-sufficient remedy, 
is Christianity to be thought gloomy and joyless? 

You are afflicted with a painful and offensive 
tumor. A physician tells you it is deadly, and 
lances and probes it, for your healing. It is not a 
very pleasant thing to do — neither pleasant to him 
nor you. But what kind of reason is there in say- 



CHRISTIAmTT AND PLEASURE. ' 221 

ing the physician is opposed to pleasure because 
he does it. 

You are carelessly sporting in a small boat some 
distance above Niagara's rapids, whiling away the 
precious moments, heedless of the increasing swift- 
ness of the current, and of the increasing clearness 
of the roar of the cataract, and of your near ap- 
proach to what will be ere long inevitable destruc- 
tion. Or you are sleeping, dreaming dreams, rev- 
eling in a region of rare delight, all unconscious of 
the flames that are licking their way up the walls 
of your dwelling, and steadily, stealthily approach- 
ing your couch of slumber. It might be a rude 
startling from your pleasant pastime, or a rude wak- 
ing from your dreamy sleep; but he who should 
rouse you to a sense of your peril, or provide a sure 
escape — you would scarcely speak of him as op- 
posed to pleasure. 

Is Christianity long-visaged and gloomy, a foe 
to joy, because it tells you of your moral wound 
and probes it for healing, providing and prescrib- 
ing unfailing remedy? Is Christianity sad-coun- 
tenanced and an enemy of pleasure, because it 
startles you from your death-sleep, and warns you 
of impending danger and bids you flee while yet 
there is possibility and hope of escape? Christian- 
ity does come, telling of sin and condemnation-^ 



222 CHBISTIAJSTITY AND PLEASTJEE. 

and these are not pleasant things to hear. But if 
they are true, it certainly is best to know them. 
If you are smitten with a moral malady that has 
struck through and through every fibre of your 
soul, and Jesus Christ is a good physician, bring- 
ing the only balm in this wide world efficacious for 
your healing — if you are a sinner before God, 
guilty and condemned, exposed to merited retri- 
bution, and Jesus Christ is a Savior come into the 
world to suffer in your stead, and by his blood to 
redeem you from sin and to wash you clean of 
its pollution, then you are certainly guilty of the 
folly of calling evil good, and good evil, if you de- 
nounce Christianity as dismal and gloomy because 
it tells you all this. Christianity does not make 
your sin and condemnation. There they are, the 
sad, dark, v/oeful realities of life. Your being in- 
different to them, careless about them, unconscious 
of them, does not do away with them. The whirl 
of gay and alluring worldliness does not put them 
farther off, any more than the dream of the sleep- 
er stops the advancing flames — or than the riotous 
indulgence of one smitten with deadly disease, 
stops the approach of it to the vitals. By and by, 
sin and condemnation will make their reality felt, 
and there will be no remedy. Now^ Christianity 
comes with its glad tidings of great joy, saying, 



CHRISTIANITY AND PLEASUEE. 223 

there is balm in Gilead and a good Physician there. 
Surely, for a human soul diseased, that is anything 
but a cheerless and joyless thing to know. 

4. But a fourth reason, why Christianity is 
thought to be opposed to pleasure is ifs demanded 
self-denial. 

The gospel does summon men to a kind of cru- 
cifixion — and crucifixion hurts. We sacrifice self, 
and cross natural desire, and compel a passion to 
go ungratified at a cost. But there is no disguis- 
ing the matter. Christianity demands just this. 
It says. Take up thy cross. Self-sacrifice is its 
inner and essential law. And the world says, "No. 
Away with this gloomy, self-afl^licting asceticism. 
God has not given us tastes and aptitudes and de- 
licious capabilities of enjoyment, only to have them 
denied and crucified. Christianity is opposed to 
pleasure. We will have none of it." 

But the denial called for by Christianity, is not 
of all natural tastes. Jesus was at weddings and 
feasts and social entertainments. He found joy in 
society. But he found his highest joy in service 
and sacrifice for others. He delighted to do God's 
will. It was his meat and drink. He lost himself, 
forgot himself, in those whom he came to seek and 
save. And this is the denial that he demands of 
his followers : denial of self; the crucifixion of sel- 



224 cnEiSTiANrrr and pleasure. 

fishness; the going out of self into Him, and the 
living in Him and for Him; and so finding the mo- 
tive power of all true life — not one's own interests, 
passions, desires, but the interest and advance of 
others. 

Now what is this, but stepping up into a higher 
life — a blesseder and more joy-giving life, than that 
which is found on the lower level of selfishness? 
It is at a cost indeed, that the step is taken. It 
hurts thus to crucify — it is a cross we take up — 
nay, to which we may be nailed ; but out of the 
crucifixion comes an exquisite pleasure, swallowing 
up the pain, and making the cross a means of up- 
lifting to a greater joy. This is the Lord's way: 
"Take my yo^e upon you, and ye shall find rest." 
Who does not know that life is dearest and richest 
when merged in that of another? What are weary- 
ing vigils and wearing care to a mother, watching 
over her child ? They cost something. But there 
is no joy to her, like the joy of that martyrdom. 
She lives in and for her oflfspring, and the very 
sacrifices her love makes, are the occasions of that 
gladness that most thrills and satisfies her soul. 
Men forget this — the world forgets it — when Chris- 
tianity is heard saying. Deny thyself. They think 
of the pain only. They forget the joy that swal- 
lows it up. They think of the yoke only. They 



CHEISTIANITY AND PLEASUEE. 225 

forget "the rest" that comes from taking the yoke. 
They think only of the loss of the lower, sel- 
fish life. They forget the gain of the higher, unsel- 
fish life — the blissful and blessed life of God, into 
the outskirts of which every man enters the mo- 
ment he denies self, takes up his cross and follows 
Jesus, and into the fulness of which he one day 
enters when he comes wholly to lose himself and 
wholly to hide his life with Christ in God. 

And now, having sought to clear Christianity of 
the misrepresentations of some, and the miscon- 
ceptions of others, let me briefly indicate its exact 
posture, with reference to pleasures that are not 
spiritual. 

In the first place, it frowns on the harmful. 
Any indulgence that tends to abuse of soul, mind, 
or body, Christianity forbids. And in this, certainly, 
Christianity is not alone. The actual command- 
ments of God written on every fibre of human 
flesh, are just as clear and authoritative as those 
written on Sinai's tables of stone, or those found in 
the four gospels. If the natural gratification of the 
body is the thing desired, (and that is a legitimate 
thing to desire) it must not be against the body's law. 
That law condemns, equally with Christianity, the 
base imbruting of the body to carnal passions and 
lusts of the flesh. The penalty in either case, is 

20 



226 CHKISTIANITY AJ^D PLEASTJKE. 

ultimate loss of capacity for pleasure, ending in 
corruption, rottenness, death. Everybody knows 
the joy of the senses. God has made them to be in- 
lets and ministries of delight. But there are higher 
faculties of mind, bringing correspondingly higher 
joys. And still above these are the affectional 
powers. And higher yet, the religious. And over 
against them, according to their gratification, is 
delight rising above delight. Pleasures, therefore, 
that dwarf and blast these higher powers, in pan- 
dering to the sensual, are of course opposed by 
Christianity. Where man seems only an append- 
age to the table, as with the glutton; where the 
Devil rings a dollar in his ear, and he dreams of 
money every day, as with the miser; where right is 
discrowned and trampled on, as with the tyrant 
clutching at power; where the pith and sinew 
and glow and spring of life are being wasted away 
and utterly worn out in the whirl of reckless dissi- 
pation, as with many an amusement-seeker and 
killer of time, — there, and in all such places, Chris- 
tianity writes peremptory prohibitions. Anything 
that does harm to any part of our nature, belittling 
the mind, soiling the spirit, impairing the vitality, 
undermining the health, anything that consciously 
lowers us, that puts us in contact with evil, that 
gives countenance to iniquity, that wrongs another, 



CHRISTIANITY AND PLEASURE. 227 

that works our own hurt, whatever the thrills and 
passions of ecstasy accompanying it — is con- 
demned. And to this full extent, be it cheerfully 
admitted, Christianity frowns on pleasure. 

Christianity corrects the abuse of innocent sour- 
ces of joy. True religion is normal life — not of the 
religious powers, so called, alone, but of the whole 
man. It tends to keep every sense and every fac- 
ulty in its place, subordinating the lower to the 
higher, but giving all their legitimate indulgence 
and gratification. The natural tendency is to ex- 
cess. Christianity comes in to balance and poise 
us — not to give us the partial and transient joy of 
any one sense or faculty, but the complete and 
permanent joy of the wdiole man; the total and 
rounded delight of every part of our nature. It 
does not interfere with any natural and innocent 
delight — nor forbid the seeking such delight from 
any natural and innocent source. It is only regula- 
tive in these i-ealms. It says, "Be diligent in busi- 
ness," but furnishes some golden rules for the prose- 
cution of it, and counsels fervency of spirit as a 
companion, making even the common toil of life a 
kind of joy-giving sacrament. It does not forbid 
riches, and honor, and human applause, but warns 
against the love of them. Let men get joy from 
these if they will. But Christianity says, See to it 



228 CHRISTIAinTY AND PLEASUEE. 

that integrity of spirit is preserved, that the riches 
do not own you instead of you the riches, that self 
is subordinated in the earning and the use of these 
sources of delight, s» that you shall be the manlier 
and mankind the richer, by reason of the acquired 
joy. Christianity moreover, does not forbid recre- 
ations. It only demands that they be without sin^ 
not evil in their nature or their tendency, in them- 
selves or their consequence, and without excess in 
their indulgence. It makes no sweeping and in- 
discriminate raid on recreative enjoyment, designed 
to charm us away from burdening care, and to 
round out the lighter and magnetic side of us. It 
is only jealous of the higher nature's purity and 
prerogatives, and careful to keep that balance in 
which alone the deepest and truest joy is condi- 
tioned. It has no frowns for the delights of music, 
but condemns, only when its strains are mingled 
with scenes and associations that soil the spirit by 
suggested uncleanness. It has no frowns for light 
and graceful exercise, but certainly is opposed to 
that abuse and perversion of it, where it must be 
taken by posturing one's self more or less in an 
other's arms. 

There is nothing in Christianity opposed to the 
innocent laugh and joy of life; there is nothing in- 
consistent with those diverting pastimes of unob- 



CHRISTIANITY AKD PLEASURE. 229 

jectionable tendency and surroundings, which re- 
lieve the mind from its tension of toil, or stir the 
blood with their boundmg activities, or give the 
rest and the recuperation which hard work has made 
necessary, or pull delights up from the heart's 
depths that break out on the air in ripples of laugh- 
ter. I can pray all the better, for forgetting my 
praying in my playing. Let that playing be inno- 
cent, let the pleasure I seek, and into which I may 
go as heartily as I go into the grandest of Chris- 
tion toil, be freed from evil influence, and my 
very praying shall sanctify and sweeten it. This 
is the relation of Christianity to pleasure. It does 
enhance the joy of what it allows. It sends us into 
our amusements with a good conscience; with a 
zest, a relish, not abused and dulled as to its edge 
by excess of indulgence and ruinous dissipation; 
with sensibilities needing no extra, artificial stimu- 
lants to whip them into a condition where they 
shall yield their wonted measure of delight. It 
says to every man accepting and adopting it, 
whatsoever thy hands find to do, whether work or 
play, do it with thy might. Anything that it is 
worth while to do, it is worth while to do with the 
whole head and heart. And Christianity is pleas- 
ant-faced, not sombre-hued — a joyful, not a joyless 
thing. God has put mirthfulness in the human 



230 CHRISTIANITT AND PLEASURE. 

soul. To laugh is to do one of those things that be- 
long only to human nature — to man. How we 
all love to win the dear, winsome, dimpled proofs 
of gladness from the baby. Is there anything in 
Christianity that says. Stamp this out, repress it; 
let mirth and gladness and joyous delights go? 
God forbid. Keep aloof only from pleasures inim- 
ical to mind, body or soul. Taste no harmful joys. 
But use all else this winning, alluring, beautiful 
world has, guarding only against perversion and 
excess. Christianity allows and approves this. It 
condemns many things beyond a question, and 
some that can stir with a very thrill and passion of 
joy. There are exquisite ecstacies of delight,concern- 
ing which, Christianity says, "No! indulge at your 
peril." But it says it, solely because the peril is there. 
These forbidden pleasures have a sting in them 
whose poison at the last will take away the capa- 
bility and so the possibility of any joy. 

Christianity endorses pleasures that are pure, 
wholesome, healthful, invigorating; and helps us 
get the more gladness out of them because we carry 
Christianity with us into them. And then it has 
joys of its own that the worldling can never know. 
Ah, I wish I could tell you all the feelings of my 
heart about this, my dear, Christless friend. But it 
is something that can never be fully told. O, the 



CHEISTIANITT AND PLEASURE. 231 

blessednesses of the man that walketh not In the 
counsel of the ungodly. But if the millions of hearts 
are to be believed that have testified, there are se- 
crets of inner and satisfying and ravishing delights 
in connection with the Christian religion, so bliss- 
ful and blessed, that they transform weakness into 
strength and sorrow into joy, and defeat into vic- 
tory, and loss into gain, and trial into triumph, and 
death into life, even this side of Heaven! Has the 
most favored of all the devotees of pleasure ever 
gotten anything like that from the world? But 
that is not all. God is merely tuning the soul, as 
an instrument, in this life. And these joys of the 
Christians, are only the notes and chords that are 
sounded out in the preparation — preludes to the 
perfect harmony that shall flood the soul — forerun- 
ners of the perfected and rapturous joy that shall 
bless the soul, in that exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory. 

I commend Christianity to you, not as, opposed 
to pleasure — but as a source of pleasure. I ask you 
to read and receive this blessed gospel, in the spirit 
of its divine founder, not in the light of the cowl 
and the cloister. Joys long to be yours, better far 
than you have ever tasted. They come to your 
hearts, like birds, seeking inlet. They may sit and 
sing awhile, waiting for entrance. But they will 



232 CHEISTIAOTTT AIsD PLEASTTR-E. 

not always slay. If you let them fly away, they 
may never come again. Never then shall be 
known by you the peace that passeth understand- 
ing and the joy unspeakable and full of glory. O, 
be sure. 

There are briers besetting every path. 

That call for patient care, 
There is a cross in every lot, 

And an earnest need for prayer ; 
But the lowly heart that trusts in God 
Is happy everywhere. 



X. 
CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS- 



30 



Prayer and provender hinder no man*s journey. 

— Old Proverb, 

A servant with this clause 

Makes drudgery divine. 
Who sweeps a room as for thy laws 

Makes that and the action fine. 

— George Herbert. 

Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of 
the Lord Jesus. — The Apostle Paul. 

The devil tempts all ; but the idle man tempts the devil. 

— Italian Proverb. 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 



Somewhere I have seen mention of a satirical 
poem in which the devil is represented as fishing 
for men, and fitting his baits to the taste and busi- 
ness of his prey; but the idler, he said, gave him 
no trouble, as he bit the naked hook. The ruin of 
many a soul has certainly dated from some vacant 
hour. They that do nothing are in the ready way 
to do worse than nothing. Employment is the ne- 
cessity of human nature. It is contributive to 
physical vigor, to mental development, to cheerful- 
ness of spirit, to moral safety. The body must 
have occupation to have and keep robustness. The 
mind must have something to do to attain to any 
degree of efficiency. The soil of the heart left fal- 
low, will soon produce weeds. Employment is so 
certainly provocative of cheerfulness, that men 
have been known to come home in high spirits 
from some quite melancholy business because they 
had had the management of it. Activity is essen- 
tial to vigorous life everywhere. And industry is a 
235 



236 CHEISTIAl^ITY AXD BUSINESS 

source of positive joy. " King Clog does not like 
King Jog," but King Jog gets by far the largest fol- 
lowing; for there is a demand for something to 
do laid of God in the very constitution of our phys- 
ical and mental and moral nature. 

But here comes Christianity condemning the 
god of this world, and the wisdom of it, and the 
children of it, warning against the cares of this 
world and the deceitfulness of riches, as the thorns 
that will choke the good seed of the kingdom. Are 
we then to have no wordly cares ? Is wealth to be 
avoided ? Is secular activity hostile to piety ? Must 
we fly business, and society and home, and seek the 
cloister in order to be most truly Christians ? Oh no. 
The remedy for worldly pollution is not monastic as- 
ceticism. Body, mind, soul, alike demand activity. 
Give them work to do, therefore, and pleasure to 
enjoy, in God's own fair though sin-smitten world. 
But in all worldly employment let its true relation 
to religion be understood and kept. What is this 
relation ? 

It is not one of antagonism. The demand for 
physical and mental activity is so set in the very 
constitution of our nature, and its gratification is so 
essential to the perfecting and ennobling of our 
life in its natural relations, that it would place God's 
redemptive work in contradiction with His creative 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 237 

work, to set Christianity in opposition to the ordi- 
nary pursuits and callings of men. These pursuits 
are essential. What we call secular toil is a neces- 
sity. Men cannot live without labor. God has set 
the solitary in families, establishing society with all 
its intricate and diverse relationships; and He has 
endowed man with gifts and powers of action, and 
acquisition, and mutual help, and implanted the im- 
pulse to put these to their appropriate activity. God 
has no gospel that antagonizes all this. And He 
could be the author of no Christianity, whose high- 
est development and life could not be attained in 
the midst of these secular activities. Eternal life 
is not to be had by renouncing the stirring business 
of temporal life. One need not neglect his farm or his 
merchandise, his office or his shop, to take care of 
his soul. There is no hostility between grace and 
trade. Godliness is profitable unto all things. We 
are incited to toil by a natural impulse. We are 
commanded to it by an outward necessity. Chris- 
tianity is not to be charged with introducing an op- 
posing necessity, as if business and religion were 
antagonistic. Being alike essential, they cannot be 
inimical. Yet there are multitudes who think work 
and worship operate to each others harm; that the 
one must be somewhat neglected, if the other is 
well attended to. I have heard men plead pres- 



238 CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 

sure of business again and again, as a reason for 
their want of interest in things spiritual, as if there 
were something essentially hostile to vital godli- 
ness, and inimical to piety in the work of the world. 
This is making God the author of a contradiction, 
for He has put man under the necessity of work, and 
under the necessity of worship. The doing of either 
cannot therefore be injurious to the other. Christian- 
ity does not condemn traffic, commerce, material ac- 
tivities of any kind. Its highest development is pos- 
sible with the busiest life. To be a first-rate business 
man does not involve being a fourth-rate Christian. 
To enrich one's self at trade, it is not necessary to 
starve one's self at religion. The man that pleads his 
vast business as a reason for his little piety, libels the 
God who made him, and the Christianity that came 
from God. There have been men, the sails of whose 
commerce have whitened nearly all seas, and yet 
whose Christ-like lives and deeds of godliness, have 
reached even beyond their commerce. There have 
been men, they are living to-day, grandly successful 
in trade, wise in investments, occupied daily with 
widely extended financial and commercial interests, 
among the very best business men in the country, 
yet great layers up of treasures in heaven, and rich 
with the riches of God. Everywhere the world 
takes knowledge of them that they have been with 



CHEISTIAiq^ITY AND BUSINESS. 239 

Jesus. Surely to be religious is not to be a ne'er- 
do-well in things temporal. Piety is not op- 
posed to trade. There is no antagonism between 
Christianity and business. 

2. But secondly, the relation is not one of se^arU' 
Hon. Christianity is not to be kept as a thing 
apart from business, away from it, unmixed with it, 
unaiFected by business, and uninfluencing business. 
Very many, however, seem to think this is the true 
adjustment of the matter. They say there is no 
antagonism. No, their religion and business never 
interfere, the one with the other. They have a 
perfect understanding. We keep them both. We 
believe in them both. But business is business. 
Religion is religion. We have a place and a time 
for each. They are not opposed to each other. Of 
course not. They are simply kept apart; made to 
know their own place ; put, as the farmer puts his 
apples and potatoes, in separate bins. The week is 
the bin for business, and Sunday is the bin for reli- 
gion. Business has the mart, the shop, the office, 
and the counting room. Religion has the sanctu- 
ary. Over the doors where they drive bargains 
and prosecute gains, and make investments, and 
counsel clients, is written, "No admittance except 
on business." And all men understand that Chris- 
tianity has no business with business. Over the 



240 CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 

door of the sanctuary is written, " Devoted to Re- 
ligion ; " and all men understand that business has 
no business with that. 

Hence come demands upon the pulpit to 
keep clear of what has been called secular 
preaching, or political preaching, i. e. preaching 
that deals with the actual sins of politics, of trade 
of covetousness ; preaching that goes fearlessly 
down into the every-day work of the week, and 
that makes religion a thing of common life, giving 
principles by which men are to cast ballots and 
observe contracts and sell goods, as well as keep 
Sundays. This is called dabbling with things that 
do not concern religion. Men say they want their 
blessed Sabbaths for rest and calm. They hear 
enough and see enough of the sins of trade during 
trade's six days of push and stir and strife and hot 
competitions and sharp bargains. " Sunday is our 
time for devotion, " it is said. " Keep it sacred to 
this single use. Make us forget the world. Preach 
piety, nothing but piety, a beautiful, orthodox, and 
thoroughly respectable piety. Let us have peaceful 
meditations and the holy sacraments. Let us hear 
of nothing but sweetness and light. We don't 
want our Sabbaths secularized. " 

And alas! there have been commissioned ambas- 
sadors of the most High God, who have been 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 24:1 

ready to come to an agreement with this delusion, 
and to accept terms by which rehgion is relegated 
to one day in the week, and even then made a 
soothing lulla]>y rather than a call to righteousness; 
an affair of dress parade, rather than a downright 
service for God. The compromiser in the pulpit 
prays, " Thy kingdom come, Thy will be d9ne," 
and the compromisers in the pews respond "Amen." 
But the amen even to that prayer is only meant for 
Sunday by these tithers of mint, anise and cum- 
min. " Thy will be done, amen, so be it," down 
through the week! Is that what the men mean 
who believe in this divorce of business and religion? 
They mean no such thing. Christianity is thought 
to have nothing to do with the store, the office, 
the counting-room and the safe investments* 
And the " amen " to the will of God is not intended 
for these secularities. What a crash it would make 
in some business houses, what an alteration in bal- 
ance sheets, what a change in investments from 
where fat dividends are the order, to where only 
the Lord is security, if " thy will be done " were 
sent clean down through every avenue of trade! 
We are by no means all guilty of this utter di- 
vorce of Christianity from business, or from secular 
affairs ; from the life that occupies us through the 
week; but we all lean too much that way. We 
31 



242 CHEISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 

speak of religious duties, of divine service, as if 
every duty v^ere not a religious duty, as if all ser- 
vice were not to be truly service for God ! We do 
not serve God so much by singing him psalms, as 
by doing justly, and loving mercy, and w^alking 
humbly. All duties are religious duties. There 
are duties of worship and duties of work, duties of 
the Sabbath, and duties of the week, duties of the 
sanctuary, the closet, the counter, the mart — and 
they are alike religious. True religion demands 
them, if they ought to be done. Pure religion and 
undefiled before God, is the doing these very things. 
Divine service is rendered as much by honesty in 
trade and diligence in business, as by fervency in 
spirit and fidelity in prayer. The proof of piety 
is not how many times you have prayed, but what 
your praying has done for you; not how often 
you have appeared in the pew of a Christian 
Church, but how much of what you have heard in 
the Church has gotten translation into action. 

" 'Tis not the wide phylactery 

Nor stubborn fast, or stated prayers 

That make us saints. We judge the tree 
By what it bears. 

"And when a man can live apart 

From works, on theologic trust, 
I know the blood about his heart 

Is dry as dust. " 



OHEISTIANITY AI^^D BUSINESS. 243 

Clearly, it is no place for Christianity alongside of 
business — outside of it. The right adjustment is not 
that of divorce or separation. 

3. But the exact relation of Christianity to busi- 
ness is not stated, when it is said that Christianity 
is to secure the righting of all wrong frocedure^ 
or the strictest moral rectitude^ in the transactions 
of men, one with another. This would be a great 
step indeed. This would be going down into the 
week with some purpose. To stop all illicit bar- 
gainings, all overreaching in trade, all misrepre- 
sentation in barter or exchange, all lying, whether 
by speech or by silence, all attempts at making the 
worse appear the better reason, all fraud from false 
balances or short weights, or semblance without 
reality, all sharp practice, everything that would 
not be justified at the bar of the best ethics — this 
would be to revolutionize trade, and change the 
rule of conduct of many a man who now goes un- 
questioned as to his business standing. 

And the man who is not allowing his Christianity 
to do this much for him, has no Christianity worth 
speaking of. It matters little how he says his 
prayers, if he is grinding the face of the poor. The 
piety that keeps the Sabbath with a great zeal of 
devotion, yet fails to keep its possessor honest on 
Monday, is not the kind that is stamped m the mint 



244 CHEISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 

of heaven. No amount of direct effort in the be- 
half of the Church and of Christ, no extent of liber- 
ality, and no exhibition of the spirit of self-sacrifice 
to promote spiritual ends, can ever atone for con- 
scious and continued deflections from tlie path of 
strict rectitude in business. The man w^ho accus- 
toms himself to take advantage of another for the 
furtherance of his own interests, hov\rever such a 
course may be justified in the loose maxims of a 
worldly morality, will never get vindication at the 
court of heaven. This much is clear. Christianity 
does demand in all transactions of trade, in all pro- 
fessional engagements, in all financial schemes and 
ventures the strictest integrity. If it does not pre- 
side sovereignly over the business and worldly 
work of a man to this extent, so that he is quit of 
all blame by conscience and the word of God, then 
that man has no right whatever to the title of Chris- 
tian. The Christianity is worthless that does not 
bar out of a man's secular affairs, falsehood and 
personal greed and sharp practice. The Chris- 
tianity is worthless that is not good behind the 
counter; that will not spurn a bribe; that dare not 
be overheard in the private office; that degrades 
commercial transaction by low cunning, or legal 
transaction by chicanery; that lies by silence; that 
sells goods for more than they are known to be 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 245 

worth, yet puts those same goods far below their 
fair value, when making returns for assessment. I 
have heard men, Christian men professedly, laugh 
at some of these things, applaud them, hold them 
up as brilliant exhibitions of shrewd business diplo- 
macy. Then I have thought of the fifteenth Psalm, 
which says they only shall abide in the Lord's tab- 
ernacle and dwell in his holy hill, who Avalk up- 
rightly and work righteousness and speak the truth 
in their hearts, who put not out their money to 
usury, nor take reward against the innocent, nor do 
evil in any way to their neighbor, and it has seemed 
to me that these justifiers and practicers of such 
questionable proceedings in business, had very poor 
chances of getting a dwelling place in God's holy 
hill. There must be pure morality in our work, 
or there can be no true religion in our worship. 
Morality is not religion, but there can be no relig- 
ion without morality. The sincerely pious heart, 
in addition to its trust in Christ and attention to 
devotional duties, will aim at the highest probity 
and uprightness in all affairs pertaining to men. 

4. But Christianity goes farther than this in its 
relation to business. Men may go thus far without 
Christianity. They do. There are noble exam- 
ples of fairest morality — illustrations of honor and 
fidelity and virtue, that have been given without the 



246 CHEISTIAOTITT AND BUSINESS. 

grace of God. A man may be beyond the reach 
of a bribe, honest, upright, unbreakable, true as 
steel, and not be a Christian. Christianity lifts a 
man above this level — demands this, but gives more. 
Truly embraced, its right relation to business is 
realized, only when business is done to tAe glory 
of God. Here, we reach the high gospel ground 
where whatsoever we do in word or deed, we do 
all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving God 
thanks. To make it impossible for us to narrow 
the application of this principle to so-called religious 
duties, the word of God carries it into the com- 
mon every day necessities of life, demanding that 
we eat and drink to the glory of God. From these 
two familiar things it spreads out into everything 
that is lawful in life. When Christ gets into a man's 
heart, he is revolutionized at the seat of his moral 
determinations. Self ceases to be the centre. God 
is the spring of all his actions. Christianity has 
only done its appropriate work, when it has so ex- 
alted all his motives, that every labor of his hands, 
every transaction in trade, every professional en- 
gagement, all that relates to his temporal life, is 
done to the glory of God. Not that he always 
thinks directly and consciously of the glory of God 
before he enters upon any secular work — not that 
he distinctly says to himself before engaging in 



CHRISTIANITY AND BUSINESS. 247 

any act of business, " I do this in the name of the 
Lord Jesus ;'* but that the supreme, controlling, un- 
derlying motive of all his life is comprehended in 
this. 

You see, now, how diligence in business may be 
a means of grace. Earnestness in a lawful calling — • 
good men sometimes call it worldliness. It is not 
that, if the man's Christianity is making him earn- 
est. If that go with him into his toil, inspiring 
him with exalted motive, he cannot fail to be earn- 
est. And instead of his business being a hindrance 
to his piety, he will find it a help, and as good as 
prayer. For to work in one's appointed sphere, 
and with right motive, is to be religious, to do a 
religious thing — as religious as to pray. 

Understand me, I do not disparage devotional 
duties. They are vital. God help the man who 
does not take time to enter his closet and shut to 
his door. And if we did not have these rest and 
worship days we call our Sabbaths, we should be 
swept utterly away from our moorings, out upon a 
sea of worldliness. But we are in this world, citi- 
zens of it, sharers of its duties, compelled to take 
hold of its dally work. And after all allowances 
are made for other elements, it is work that rears 
monuments, that builds nations, that wins battles, 
that achieves political victories, that carries causes 



248 CHElSTIA]SnTT AND BUSINESS. 

of any kind anywhere. Genius is a good thing — 
but industry is a better thing. The plodders in the 
end are the men of achievement. The Church 
is not a sponge. Christians are not pensioners. 
Piety is not a sentiment. Life- is a battle. Relig- 
ion is business. And a first-rate Christian need 
not be a fifth-rate man of business. Christianity 
says, " Whatsoever thy hands find to do that is 
lawful to be done, do it with the whole heart. 
But do it to the glory of God ! Be unworldly at 
your world's work. Let not the present and the 
earthly absorb you. Hold all things as not your 
own. Take them and use them, and be the master 
of them, not their slave." . Christianity prescribes 
no law for dress, for amount of business, for extent 
of possessions. It establishes the great principle 
of unworldliness, enjoins the being unenslaved by 
earthly things, saying, Let them that buy be as 
though they possessd not; i. e., so possessing that 
the loss of the things possessed, shall not be like 
taking away one's all; but shall leave the soul 
calm, free, cheerful, master of itself, and content by 
the grace of God. Buying, possessing, accumu- 
lating — this is not worldliness. But doing this in 
the love of it, with no love of God paramount— do- 
ing it so that thoughts of eternity and of God are 
an intrusion, deemed as having no business with 



CHRISTIANITY ANl^ BUSINESS. 249 

the business ; doing- it so that one's spirit is secular- 
ized in the process; this is worldliness. Let a man 
beware of this. It will eat out his piety as inevita- 
bly as he lives and allows it. Nay, to allow it, 
is to prove the want of piety. Get rich, if you 
will. You take great risks. But Christianity does 
not say to any man, " You must be worth only so 
much, extend your business only so far." It says, 
"Use your riches for the glory of God;" i. e., let 
them set loosely outside of you, while the Christ is 
inside regnant and worshipped. If they once usurp 
his place, woe to you! And you can tell whether 
they have your Lord's place, or not. Any man can 
know whether he is holding his wealth and using it 
to the glory of God. Any man can easily decide 
whether his business is being done in the name of 
the Lord Jesus. If it unfit him for devotion, keep 
him out of his closet, leave him no time for prayer, 
thrust itself into his hours of worship; if it secu- 
larize him, so that his religion becomes to him in- 
trusive whenever it peers in at the store, the ofiice, 
the shop, the counting room on a week day, and 
he show the door to it with a "Begone ! Away with 
you! You belong to Sunday ;" if it burden him 
with cares and anxieties; if it make him hard, grasp- 
ing, close-fisted, ruluctant at outgoes and eager for 
incomes, quick for further investments in stocks 
32 



250 CHEISTIA2^ITY AND BUSINESS. 

and estates, but slow and doubtful about investments 
where the Lord is security-^then Christianity has 
little to do with the business, and little to do with 
him. If he enlarge his business by contracting his 
religion, and swell his income by starving his soul, 
the balance sheet will be wofully against him in the 
final reckoning. 

But a means of grace, a promoter of godliness, 
is that business done in the name of Jesus, in the 
spirit of consecration, its gains made useful in a 
Christ-like way, its ventures all baptized in prayer, 
its extension sought only as a means to greater 
good, its whole conduct and character and profit 
decided by considerations pertaining to the next 
world as well as to this. Seest thou a man diligent 
in such business? He shall stand before the King. 



XI. 
CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN. 



From henceforth all generations shall call me blessed^ 
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things. 

— Magnificat of the Virgin. 

I am prescient by the very hope 
And promise set upon me, that henceforth 
Only my gentleness shall make me great, 
My humbleness exalt me. 

— Eve, in Mrs. Browning's ^'Drama of Exile.^^ 

' Favor is deceitful and beauty is vain ; but a woman that 
feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. — The Proverbs. 



CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN. 



Up in the hill country, under a Judaean skj, a 
Jewish maiden, standing in the mystery of a mar- 
velous motherhood, flowered on the instant into 
poet and prophet. It was Mary of Nazareth, in 
the language of expectant faith, singing for very 
joy what has since been known as "the Magnificat 
of the Virgin." 

"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit 
hath rejoiced in God, my Savior. For he hath re- 
garded the low estate of his handmaiden ; for, be- 
hold, from henceforth all generations shall call me 
blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me 
great things: and holy is his name." 

What a contrast between this song of the Virgin 
and the lament of Eve! Inspiration has not given 
us Eve's lament; but a gifted woman has sought 
to gather it out of that far silence. She thus inter- 
prets Eve's anguished heart after the sin and the 

curse : 

«'Was I not 
At that last sunset seen in Paradise, 
253 



254 christia:nity aito woman. 

Mistress of feast and favor? Could I touch 
A rose with m j white hand, but it became 
Redder at once? Could I walk leisurely 
Along our swarded garden, but the grass 
Tracked me with greenness? 

Alas me ! alas, 
Who have undone myself from all that best, 
Fairest and sweetest, to this wretchedest. 
Saddest and most defiled . . For I, who lived 
Beneath the wings of angels yesterday. 
Wander to-day beneath a roofless world." 

This is poetic conception. But recall that first 
mother, kneeling beside her murdered son — mur- 
dered by another son, and looking thus upon the 
visible fruit of her sin in Paradise, and think how 
the anguish must have pierced her soul! Surely 
she could never have borne it, had not hope grown 
in her heart through God's blessed promise — the 
hope that she, the woman, having been an Eve to 
man, in God's good time, would be a Mary to him, 
and give him. a Savior. 

God gave her a child and named it Jesus. The 
Savior of the world was born in her. It was a 
re-crowning of woman's discrowned nature, that 
gift of God. It was honoring woman with sover- 
eign dignities. Ever since that hour it has been 
woman's heavenliest privilege to have the miracle 
of the incarnation renewed in the inward history 



CHEISTIANITT AND WOMAN. 255 

of her heart. Ever since that hour it has been 
woman's one high mission to right the original 
wrong of Eden, and with Christ born in her own 
heart, to find and give him room in the great heart 
of the world. And ever since that hour woman's 
truest fame has been this — not that the world 
should call her beautiful, brilliant, fashionable, but 
blessed. That she has fully entered into her royal 
privilege, and wholly discharged her high mission, 
and coveted earnestly this noblest fame, cannot be 
said. Some have done it, thank God! Some have 
done it. But not woman as such, ruling in soci- 
ety, leading in fashion, queening in domestic life. 
She has too often failed of achieving her beneficent 
mission and of winning her peculiar glory and 
crown. 

Yet hers is the privilege and the power through 
Christianity and Christ. She stands somehow re- 
lated to Jesus as man does not. Mary, folded about 
in that mystery of motherhood, makes it impossible 
that there should be anything on earth more whol- 
ly in sympathy with Jesus Christ than the heart 
of a true Christian woman. She has even natr.ral 
adaptation this way. The love that gives and the 
love that suffers, this is the natural love of woman. 
There is a love that delights itself rather in the 
sacrifices it obtains^ but this is less woman's than 



256 CHRISTIANITY AlO) WOMAN. 

man's. The giving, suffering, self-denying love is 
less man's than woman's. We know such love, 
we have seen it — a mother's love whose first chris- 
tening, in that sorrow of sorrows reserved to her 
sex, is a baptism of suffering — and whose weary- 
ing, wearing watchfulness through all the subse- 
quent days and nights of toil and care, is never 
broken and never ended, even though pierced and 
stung with w^hat is "sharper than a serpent's tooth, 
a thankless child." And a w^ife's love, deathlessly 
flinging itself in a husband's descending path of 
disgrace and infamy to stay him from ruin, and 
giving her the courage for martyrdom rather than 
that he should go unattended and unloved. 

Such love, so self-forgetful, finding joy in the 
sacrifices it makes, esteeming it more blessed to 
give than to receive, is it not oftenest born in the 
heart of woman? And does not this very fact 
make it clear that the heart of woman is more ac- 
cessible to piety, and more open to the approaches 
of Him who by suffering conquers, and whose cross 
and passion give to His gospel its chief attractive 
power? 

Then, too, the Church of Christ, beautified, puri- 
fied, glorified, without spot or wrinkle or any such 
thing — what is it as portrayed in the Word of 
God, but woman, the bride of Christ, who is her 



CHRISTIANITY ANI) WOMAN. 257 

Maker and Savior, and Husband forever! Thus 
in divine figure is v^romanhood honored by Him 
who was born of a woman. 

And how Christianity has uplifted and ennobled 
her, and done to her "great things," making the wo. 
man in whose heart Christ is born, not only the best 
of women, but most truly a woman, so mighty in 
her gentleness, so exalted in her humility, so 
crowned and wedded in her self-surrender. 

Christianity has done this by its doctrine of equal- 
ity, and by its honor of the passive virtues. 

I, By its doctrine of equality. The gospel is a 
grand emancipator. It thunders against all wrong 
and seeks to break down every strong-hold of op- 
pression. But mightier than its thunders is its love, 
melting weapons of war into implements of hus- 
bandry, lifting from bondage into freedom, trans- 
forming the spirit of tyranny into tender and trust- 
ful regard, and blotting out all iniquitous distinctions 
of race or sex or caste or color. From this point 
of view "there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is 
neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor fe- 
male;" for all are one in Christ Jesus. It was a new 
gospel, this, as it came to the world eighteen cen- 
turies ago. It struck everywhere against estab- 
lished and throned iniquities. It broke down the 
middle wall of partition between Jew and Gentile, 



258 CHEISTIAmTY AND WOMAN. 

and proclaimed salvation, not for Israel alone, but 
for the hitherto despised nations round about, 
deemed up to that hour aliens and outcasts. It 
broke the manacles off the limbs of bondmen, ban- 
ishing slavery from the Roman Empire in three 
centuries; for it put the slave and his master on a 
level before God, made them of one blood, charged 
them with the sanje condemnation, and rendered 
salvation possible to them only by the same peni- 
tence, at the same altars, through the same sacri- 
fice. It raised w^oman, too, from her deep degra- 
dation and doom of unpitied ignorance and toil. 
There is neither male nor fem.ale in Christ Jesus, 
i. e., neither the one nor the other has any advan- 
tage, or is entitled to any favor before God. In 
regard to salvation, in all that pertains to eternal 
life, they are on a level. They are equally precious 
in the sight of heaven. They are equally favored 
with respect to the gifts and graces of godliness. 
What God thus honored, what Christianity thus 
enriched and crowned, men could not well con- 
tinue to hold in degraded position, and to treat with 
undisguised assumption of superiority as common 
and inferior. 

The women of Christendom can hardly appre- 
ciate how they have been elevated by this gospel 
doctrine ot equality. Everywhere, but in connec- 



CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN. 259 

tioH with Christianity, woman has been degraded, 
and is to-day. She has been kept in ignorance, she 
has been the toiler in the field, she has been se- 
cluded from society; often the mere instrument of 
lust ; often a mere beast of burden, oppressed and 
enslaved at her toil ; always the unhonored, unedu- 
cated, undeveloped ; never the intelligent and trusted 
companion and friend. So is she now in China and 
India, and Africa, and the isles of the sea, save 
where Christianity has reached with its pervasive 
power of love and spirit of brotherhood. There 
she is changing into woman, the queen of home, 
beloved and honored as a wife and mother, at the 
same communion table and the same cross with the 
man, the intelligent sharer of his joys and griefs, 
his hopes and disappointments, diffusing a mild and 
purifying and elevating influence over all the rela- 
tions of life. "Thy twain shall be one flesh." "Hus- 
bands love your wives even as Christ also loved the 
Church, and gave Himself for it." "Dwell with 
them according to knowledge, giving honor unto 
the wife, as being heirs together of the grace of 
life. " " The woman is the glory of the man. " 
"There is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus." 
Where precepts like these prevail, woman's deg- 
radation is impossible. They place her neither 
beneath nor above man, but by the side of him, in 



260 CHEISTIANITY AND WOMAN. 

the appointment of God; neither inferior nor supe- 
rior, but different — man's other self, the complement 
and fullness of his being. Thus Christianity up- 
lifts and honors womanhood, links it with manhood 
in all holy and beneficent ministry, and makes wo- 
man more truly womanly, as she makes room for 
its gift of God. 

But Christianity has done for woman great 
things, secondly: 

2. By its honor of the passive virtues'^ meek- 
ness, gentleness, forbearance, forgiveness, lowliness 
purity, unambitious love. Here Christianity made 
issue with the whole world. Before Christ was 
born these qualities had low place in the world's 
estimation. Might was deemed to consist in mere 
naked force, not in gentleness. Power was placed 
before purity; intellect before heart; strength of 
will before strength of affection. The qualities 
honored as divine were courage, wisdom, justice, 
strength, and these are peculiarly the qualities of 
the man. It was manly strength, manly justice, 
manly courage, manly wisdom that received divine 
honors and made mortals kin to the gods. 

Christ came saying. Blessed are the meek, 
blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in 
heart, blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are 
they who are persecuted for righteousness sake, 



CHEISTIANITT AND WOMAN. 261 

resist not evil, love your enemies, bless them that 
curse you, do good to and pray for them that hate 
you. And for w^hat grand reason did he say this? 
" That ye may be the children of your Father 
which is in heaven. " As if character v\^ere to be 
consummated and crov^ned and made godlike only 
by the very opposite qualities from those which 
had hitherto had the applause and honor of the 
world. And are not these qualities — meekness, 
pureness, lovingness, patience, the passive strength 
of martyrdom, peculiarly the qualities of woman? 
Are they not distinctively feminine? Yet they are 
given a divine glory in the gospel of the Son of 
God. Those possessing them get the heavenliest 
benediction. They are unfolded in Christ's life, as 
well as honored in his speech. He is not only the 
one altogether mighty, but, and chiefly, the one alto- 
gether lovely. In Him, no wisdom overtops love. 
We never forget his gentleness in His grandest dis- 
plays of power. His exaltation is His humility. 
"He was obedient unto death, even the death of the 
cross; wherefore God also hath highly exalted 
Him." 

This is the peculiar feature of Christianity. It 
has no glory for the strong, no honor for the wise, 
but it speaks beatitudes for the patient and the 
meek. It makes lovingness rather than mightiness 



262 CHEISTIAXLTY AKD WOMAN". 

the crowning excellency. It inculcates "the idea 
of the divineness of what is pure, above the divine- 
ness of what is strong." 

It is thus that He, who was born of Mary, hath 
done great things for woman. He has put exceed- 
ing honor on the passive virtues. He has shed a 
splendor from heaven on the order of graces that 
are peculiarly feminine. He has made most god- 
like the patience and sufferance and holy martyr- 
dom of love, the crown-jewel in the cluster of 
gems making up the diadem of woman. He has 
lifted woman to new place in the world. And just in 
proportion as Christianity has sway, will she rise 
to a higher dignity in human life. What she has 
now, and w^hat she shall have, of privilege and 
true honor, she owes to that gospel which took 
those qualities peculiarly her own and which had 
been counted weak and unworthy, and gave them 
a divine glory in Christ. Jesus cannot conquer a 
place in the world by his gentleness and patience 
and suffering love, without commanding for the 
divineness of purity, and the exaltation of humility, 
and the strength of obedience, their right and de- 
served acknowledgment. And just as this is -done 
will woman's place be higher, and her influence 
broader, and the number greater who shall call 
her blessed. 



CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN. 263 

Yes, "blessed!" That is the word. It is woman's 
truest fame. It was Mary's crown — her glory — 
her satisfying, blissful joy. They have mocked 
the lowly Virgin with such homage since, they 
have lifted her to such so-called dignities, they have 
named her with such other names, that the gentle 
spirit of her Hebrew song seems like a rebuke to 
the wicked idolatry. The Romish church has fal- 
sified Mary's word. 

• We may be sure that this Jewish hand-maiden 
in the blessedness of her blessedness bowed her 
heart lower than the knees of all other worshipers, 
aud that now in heaven the very thought of wear- 
ing the titles manufactured for her by a perverting 
priesthood would pierce her like a shame. The 
only glory she won and wore on earth was the 
glory of true womanhood. It was not immaculate 
origin, nor immaculate life, nor exaltation to divine 
honors as queen of heaven. It was not preroga- 
tive of power or place — not force, not wisdom, not 
demanded rights. It was womanhood in lowliness 
and loveliness rejoicing in God her Savior, and 
content to be called blessed. 

So Christianity comes to woman desiring that 
its Christ shall be born in her — no more indeed 
after the flesh, but after the spirit. This is her 
heavenliest privilege. Then, with sense of her in- 



264: CHRISTIAKETT AXD WOMA^. 

debtedness, Christianity bids her go forth with the 
patience of love and the spirit of sacrifice, to give 
this Christ to others. What higher mission and 
grander work has woman than this ! To be filled 
with gratitude for the outward benefits of Chris- 
tianity, sensible that she owes everything to this 
gospel of the Son of God, to welcome to her heart 
the brooding Spirit, through whose overshadowing 
Christ may be born to her, and then to go forth 
with Jesus in her heart on a ministry of love and 
mercy, breaking her alabaster box of precious oint- 
ment for the sin-smitten and sorrow-laden, so that 
they filled too with the fragrance of Jesus, may 
carry her dear anointing to their burial! O for 
such womanhood, unwilling simply to be lapped 
in the folds of a silken and easy life, caring not to 
be called fashionable, content to be called blessed — 
willing to lose all thought of self, of finery and 
pleasure, in an earnest effort, with a passion of love 
and a patience of hope, to relieve and heal the sor- 
row and the vice of the world. O for such 
women, ambitious not to vote, but to be — not to 
make additions to political rights, but to acquire 
personal and moral worth — not to have more au- 
thority and to be a power like force, but to have 
more influence and to be a power like love. Is 
this deemed a mission without honor and unworthy 



CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN. 265 

of woman? Then unworthy was the mission of 
the Son of God ; for this was His. He came not 
to be ministered unto but to minister, not to save 
himself but others, not to conquer and possess by 
the might of mere power, but by love and sacrifice. 

We have such womanhood. But we have, alas, 
much that is anything else. "Society" is woman's 
expression of certain ideas, for society is measura- 
bly under her control. We have women ambitious 
to queen it there, even at the expense of their chil- 
dren and their souls; whose idea of hospitality is 
an unlimited table, an exhibition of plate and fur- 
niture, and a round of airy nothings and dreary 
emptiness of talk; whose idea of marriage is, not 
that it is the most solemn of all contracts between 
two human souls, of which God is the perpetual 
witness and judge, but instead, a sham show for the 
benefit of the public, parading one day as million- 
aires, even though to sink back to debt and obscu- 
rity the next; whose idea of home is, not a sphere 
of order and love and law, hallowed and peaceful, 
but a place of living, a base of supplies, a dry-dock 
for repairs, a peg on which to hang the appearance, 
if not the reality, of wealth. 

Thus have these solemn verities, hospitality, 
marriage, home, entrusted to woman's keeping, 
been belittled and degraded by, alasl too many 

34 



266 CHEISTIAJ^ITY AND WOMAN. 

who have claimed to be leaders in society. And 
their perversion of these sanctities of life has had 
its baneful influence down through all the different 
social levels, making women there, according to 
the measure of their means, the same delighters in 
gew-gaws and the same paraders of shams. 

O, that woman would end all this, and exalt 
womanhood, by being true to herself ! She has a 
great work to do — a mighty work; and before her 
just now God sets an open door. Within her reach 
are possibilities of influence unbounded. Of all 
the forces, physical, mental, and moral, the moral 
are the mightiest; and art and poetry in all the 
Christian ages have personified the moral powers 
by woman. Christianity is lifting these to higher 
and higher place. The world is destined yet to 
think far more of love and patience and gentleness, 
and the suffering spirit of sacrifice; and far less 
relatively of authority and force and the might to 
win bloody battles. The courage to endure shall 
be prized increasingly above the courage to fight 
The laureled and trumpeted winners of victories, 
the world's garlanded heroes, shall yet be those 
who conquer by deeds of faith and generous min- 
istry ; by love that asks not, but gives and suffers ; 
by deathless patience — the outreaching and self- 
denying of womanly hearts, daring to be singular 
rather than be untrue. 



CHEISTIAOTTY AND WOMAK". 267 

I stand amazed before the revelations of the 
last decade of years as to how a woman may help 
Christ's Kingdom come. What unused and un- 
guessed resources have been lying hid, that this 
"woman's work for woman" has called out of their 
secret places, and sent on missionary errands 
around the world ! It is the dawn of a new day — 
and there scarcely has been a brighter since the 
angels made the Judaean air thick with melody 
when Jesus was born. It looks, after all, as if the 
strategic point in the warfare for this world's su- 
premacy were the heart of woman. That won, 
and the family is won. And when "up goes the 
family, down goes heathenism." 

To secure a change of levels like this, to bring 
about the uplifting of womanly hearts, woman 
surely has peculiar adaptations. In this business 
there are paths where her feet are already shown 
to be the swiftest; needs, she by all odds is the 
fittest to meet ; ministries, it has already been her 
abysmal joy to share. For this business the Mar- 
thas and Marys, the Tryphenas and Tryphosas, 
the Phoebes and Dorcases, must be multiplied as 
the drops of the morning. 

The world waits for such women. The field 
opens. The hour strikes. Women of America, 
"beneath the cross or never!" There only can you 



268 CHKISTIAinTT Am) WOMAN. 

be truly crowned and wedded. First, youf hearts 
to Christ. Then, Christ born in them, and a con- 
stant dweller there. Then, forth upon your mis- 
sion to find room for the gift of God in the great 
heart of the world. You can do nothing! You 
can do everything. You can give and serve and 
fray. You can give self-denyingly. You can 
serve lovingly. You can pray conqueringly. The 
best example of self-denying liberality in the Bible 
is recorded of woman. The best example of lov- 
ing service in the Bible is recorded of woman. 
The best example of conquering prayer in the 
Bible is recorded of woman. It was no great gift, 
no great service, no great prayer. The gift was a 
widow's mite. The service was the anointing of 
Jesus with a box of ointment. The prayer was a 
mother's prayer for a daughter possessed with a 
devil. But the gift and service and prayer were 
in self-denial and love and faith. And so in the 
sight of God they were of great price. Jesus never 
let fall such words of royal commendation as con- 
cerning these three women. Of the poor widow 
he said, "She hath cast in more than they all." Of 
Mary with her alabaster box of precious ointment 
he said, "She hath done what she could." And to 
the praying Canaanitish mother he said, "O woman, 
great is thy faith. Be it unto thee even as thou 
wilt." The human suppliant had power with 



CHRISTIANITY AND WOMAN. 269 

God, and the Creator said to the creature, "Thy 
will be done." Surely such giving, such service, 
such prayer is possible to every woman. It is not 
the greatness of it, but the spirit of it, that tells. O 
ye women, whether of affluence or poverty, wheth- 
er of high place or low place, whether old or young, 
go at the call of Christianity and do your woman's 
work. There are treasuries of the Lord that wait 
your mites. There are alabaster boxes you may 
break for Jesus, if not upon Him. There are 
daughters, O how many, this wide world over, in 
Christendom and heathendom with evil posses- 
sions, whom you by faith may bring to Christ for 
healing 

"Henceforward, rise to all 

The sanctified devotion and full work 

To which thou art elect forever more.'* 

"Rise 
To thy peculiar and best altitudes 
Of doing good and of enduring ill." 

"If wo by thee 
Had issue to the world, thou shalt go forth 
An angel of the wo thou didst achieve." 

"A child's kiss 
Set on thy lips shall make thee glad : 
A poor man served by thee shall make thee rich — 
A sick man helped bj thee shall make thee strong; 
Thou shalt be served thyself by every sense 
Of service which thou renderest." 



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